Modernizing operations of a key player in Alberta’s agriculture industry

Introduction

Agriculture Financial Services Corporation (AFSC) is a provincial Crown corporation that provides specialized financial products and services to farmers and producers across Alberta, including crop insurance, livestock price insurance, farm loans, commercial loans and farm income disaster assistance. With a history that spans over 80 years, AFSC plays a major role in ensuring the long-term stability of Alberta’s agriculture industry. 

The challenges confronting agricultural producers and farmers in Alberta are vast. In recent years, there has been a global pandemic, extended drought conditions and a number of extreme weather events. With the impacts associated with climate change only expected to increase, AFSC’s programs and services are critical for Alberta’s farmers, producers and agribusinesses, securing the supply of food to Canadians as weather patterns shift and agricultural challenges intensify.

Challenge

In 2016, AFSC wanted to modernize its operations in order to make a more substantial impact on Alberta’s agriculture industry and the stability of the province’s food chain. Key aims of this initiative included meeting the increasing client expectations around technology, transparency and digital services and responding to legislative changes and time-sensitive government mandates in a more agile way. At the time, AFSC’s online presence was fractured and lacked adequate self-service, client-friendly options. The organization recognized that unnecessary, transactional branch visits could impact the productivity of AFSC’s farmers and producers. Additionally, the on-premise, custom-built technology solutions underpinning AFSC’s operations were dated, expensive to maintain and difficult to configure. AFSC was also using several aging, custom-built applications to work around the limitations of its legacy platform.

AFSC selected Salesforce as the foundation of its modernization efforts. “At the time, we were only looking for a client portal. Salesforce’s presentation really expanded our awareness as to how much more it could do for us,” Sara Schmidt, Vice-President of Enterprise Strategy and ESG at AFSC, explained. Given the complexity of the transformation, AFSC also wanted a strategic firm to help navigate modernization activities and build internal capacity.

PwC Canada came with an endorsement from Salesforce and extensive expertise and experience, but the deciding factor for AFSC came down to fit. “It was clear during early discussions that it went well beyond technology with PwC,” Darryl Kay, AFSC’s Chief Executive Officer, explained. “They challenged us to think differently—to think about processes before we got into the technology and to put the end user at the centre. It was eye opening because you think that technology is going to solve all your problems—and it won’t.”

Approach

The relationship started with a one-month review and validation of AFSC’s client experience roadmap and evolved into an implementation of the first platform launch, AFSC Connect 1.0, which focused both on laying the foundation for systems integration and setting up Salesforce to provide a 360-degree view of the client.

Throughout this work, the PwC Canada team showcased the importance of a human-led and technology-powered approach, which focused on creating Salesforce-based solutions in tandem with targeted activities related to change management, process improvement and benefits realization. PwC Canada also helped AFSC divide its complex transformation efforts into a series of manageable projects aligned with the client’s strategic vision, each building towards the achievement of its overall transformation goals. These interim projects led to tangible benefits to AFSC’s clients, such as reductions in branch visits and improved program response times.  

Over subsequent years, PwC Canada has helped AFSC implement different aspects of Salesforce successfully, using it to reshape its operations to provide more value to agricultural producers and farmers in Alberta. Together, PwC Canada and AFSC have successfully executed on more than a dozen Salesforce-focused projects, including moving the client’s loan processes entirely out of its legacy system and onto the Salesforce platform. They’ve also been able to simplify and improve outgoing electronic fund transfers (EFTs) using the AFSC Connect platform, which required integration with AFSC’s SAP enterprise resource planning solution, and developed and rolled out disaster funding for farmers due to drought conditions.

Four keys to success

Impact

Our collaborative efforts have been instrumental to the transformation journey. “PwC wants us to succeed and is committed to making sure we get through the challenges we face,” Schmidt said. “I know we wouldn’t be anywhere near where we are today without the relationship that we’ve built with PwC.”

Key outcomes include significantly enhancing the client experience, as evidenced by a higher rate of digital adoption among AFSC’s clients than initially expected. The transformation has also given AFSC’s people the ability to focus on higher-value activities, such as building stronger client relationships. And it has allowed AFSC to introduce new programs in as little as six weeks, getting disaster assistance funds more quickly into the hands of Alberta’s producers when needed. 

By choosing a cloud-based platform, AFSC has also been able to achieve results on a project-by-project basis, effectively managing its costs while working towards the end goal of reshaping its operations. AFSC has also been able to take advantage of technologies and tools that didn’t exist in the early days of the transformation as a result of Salesforce’s software-as-a-service (SaaS) model, which includes regular updates to keep the platform up to date and provide users with new features and functionality.

Most importantly, AFSC has undergone a fundamental shift in how it thinks as an organization. It has become more focused on building and enhancing client relationships in the digital age and more adaptable to legislative developments and adapting programs as a result of climate change. “We’re really well positioned for some of the unknowns that are part of our future,” said Kay. “We’re much better prepared to work with our clients to provide more value to that conversation, to that relationship. We’re really well positioned going forward.”