SmartOysters is a multi-platform mobile app designed by oyster farmers to help manage on farm activities.
It is a simple-to-use application accessed with a weatherproof smart phone that uses mobile data, Wi-Fi and GPS to allow it to be used as an on-water farm management tool.
Initially a large-scale trial took place on our Whangaroa farm. This helped Moana understand how it could be used, plus gain buy-in from our own farm team who were able to see the real potential to transform how we plan and manage our farms and stock.
Once operating well in Whangaroa, SmartOysters was rolled out to our Coromandel, Orongo Bay, Kerikeri and Parengarenga operations in May of 2019. This has enabled dashboards of the tio information collected on stocktake, to be displayed, filtered and formatted to guide decision-making and also more accurately locate and smooth tasks and workload during farm harvest and grading.
As long as the information is accurately recorded, this eliminates regular stocktakes, provides visibility of size, location and volume, saves significant time and effort gathering the overall view of inventory on farms (as it’s available on the computer desktop of all managers), subsequently eliminating the need to record in a book, whiteboard or be remembered by key staff at each separate location.
It has also enabled team leaders to more easily plan and set tasks for their teams from anywhere at any time, straight from their smartphone.
Another potential benefit is that over time, as historical information is built up, SmartOysters will have the ability to enable tracking of batches and families of oysters to inform the selective breeding programme.