When it comes to the business of agriculture, technological innovation doesn’t exactly sprout every year. Arguably, the biggest high-tech development hit the industry in 1892, when John Froelich invented a machine that revolutionized farming, replacing hundreds of human workers with a gasoline-powered mechanical alternative. More than a century later, Froelich’s technology remains the focal point of the farming industry. Its name? The tractor.

Perhaps this is why two recent IT innovations at agribusiness giant Royster-Clark, a CIO 100 honoree, are so impressive. The first, a Web services application designed to expedite customer credit approval, lets the company authorize purchases within seconds, delivering credit decisions in minutes. The second, a distributed computing methodology aiming to eventually run all billing functions overnight, will help the company avoid a million-dollar hardware upgrade that would take months to employ.

At a time when Royster-Clark’s IT budgets were shrinking precipitously, the applications cost just over $30,000 combined. The investments enabled the company to use its existing IT assets more effectively and position itself for growth. The endeavors have also transformed IT at the $900 million company from a reactive mishmash of staid systems to a vibrant and dynamic business partner that tackles problems head-on. "For a company in [the agribusiness] industry, we’re now chewing on some pretty serious stuff," says Robert L. Paarlberg, managing director of IT at the Collinsville, Ill., facility. "From our perspective, this is the only way to get ahead."

Better Customer Service

The first of these efforts began in early 2001, when Royster-Clark executives gave Paarlberg the go-ahead to build a low-cost alternative to accelerating the customer credit application process at 350 retail locations across the country. For years, this process had been laboriously slow, taking about two weeks between application and credit-to-company response. Customers applied for credit using paper forms that were mailed to credit managers, faxed to one of two credit bureaus, faxed back to credit managers, mailed to headquarters, entered into a database and finally mailed back to the point of sale.

If a credit manager was out, forms could sit for days. If a credit bureau needed extra time to review an application, the process fell behind even more. Meanwhile, Paarlberg says, customers were forced to wait to see if they qualified to purchase fertilizer and other pricey agriculture products on credit. The system needed an overhaul, and he knew he was the one who had to change it. "The way we used to run this process was downright awful," he scoffs. "Just about anything would have been an improvement, but we wanted to fix things right."