Empowering Legacy Verified with Streamlined Efficiency Through Our Innovative Tag Management System
Summary
Legacy Verified replaced their outdated and cumbersome Excel-based animal tag management process with a new Tag Management System (TMS) built on the Microsoft Power Platform.
Their previous system, entirely based in an Excel workbook, had extremely slow performance, resulting in a poor user experience, unintentional errors, and incomplete data, which negatively impacted their business processes and the experience of their customers. Individual animal tags are the lifeblood of their business, and the original Excel Workbook had a higher risk of user (and functionality) errors and was not a secure way to manage hundreds of thousands of animal identification numbers.
Our team implemented a secure, customized solution using Power Apps, Power Automate, and SurveyJS (an open-source JavaScript form library), and empowered Legacy Verified to improve their data integrity and enable a seamless customer experience.
Challenges
Before our collaboration, Legacy Verified faced several challenges with their manual Excel sheets:
Slow performance
This Excel file was trying to do so much and had so many tabs, formulas, automations, and datasets contained within it that trying to do something even as simple as sorting or filtering a column was a lag-prone and frustrating affair. Performance issues like this, aside from providing a poor user experience, often also resulted in a subpar customer experience, as it took longer to respond to the customer and provide them the information they need.
This TMS is one of the most important things we ever did.
Data integrity complications
It was difficult to ensure this spreadsheet was the single source of truth for all things related to Legacy Verified’s customer and tag management. Without typical system safeguards in place, such as read-only fields, there was nothing preventing an unintended update of a formula or what should have been static data, which led to errors that could affect the entire spreadsheet if not noticed and corrected immediately.
Incomplete and inconsistent data entries impacting business processes
Since this was a spreadsheet and not a database, there was no way to ensure consistency of data entry; for example, a customer name might be entered “Ranch ABC123 Ltd.” in one area, and “Ranch abc-123 Limited” somewhere else. This could cause major issues and delays down the road, resulting at the very least in additional verifications needed to ensure they were referencing the same customer (e.g. address or phone number verification).
Solution
Our team was able to replace Legacy Verified’s Excel workbook with a custom TMS solution that combined the capabilities of Power Apps, Power Automate, and SurveyJS to create an efficient and durable experience that their employees and customers benefit from.
Power Apps
We implemented a model-driven app built on the Microsoft Power Apps platform, which utilizes a Dataverse relational database and serves as the user (employee) interface. By using this tool, we were able to create and enforce things like required fields, lookups to related tables to ensure data consistency and minimize re-entry of data, as well as some basic summarization and reporting functions to help leadership assess performance and adjust their strategy accordingly.
Power Automate
One of our main goals for this project was to automate wherever possible in order to save users time and reduce data entry errors. We created many flows in Power Automate to accomplish this, some fairly simple and others rather complex. In this way, certain user actions in the system trigger flows to run and do things like send emails to customers and generate reports on request, all in a matter of seconds.
SurveyJS
We used SurveyJS, an open-source JavaScript form library, to provide a way for Legacy Verified’s clients and other stakeholders to submit information requests. These information requests use a customer template to automatically prepare and send a report with the desired information to the requestor. This form is hosted on Legacy Verified’s website and enabled them to bring instant reporting to their clients and stakeholders without any additional licensing.
Results
Legacy Verified’s custom TMS application has greatly improved their data integrity and ensures consistent and accurate records. It has streamlined their internal processes, thereby enhancing their operational efficiency and improving the experience they’re able to provide for their customers. The TMS has eliminated the holes in their data and ensures all imperative steps are followed with our structured data entry framework.
Key Improvements & Benefits
- Up to 25 hours saved per user per month on manual / repetitive data entry and report creation – users can now spend their time on more valuable activities
- Upgraded system performance / responsiveness – moved from an overloaded Excel workbook to a best-in-class cloud application
- Change history – changes are logged, showing who, what, and when for each change, including the previous and new values for that field
- Improved data quality and dependability – “If we ever lost this data, we would most likely be suspended from USDA-AMS approval as a Service Provider and more than likely have to close our doors. This TMS is one of the most important things we ever did.” – RaeMarie Knowles, President / Managing Partner
- Single source of truth – there is one version of the data, and it lives where everyone who needs it can access it
- Data validation and consistency – minimized re-entry and automatically populate data where possible
- Significant reduction in cost per audit – “We are audited by USDA-AMS annually, and the rates they charge have increased significantly. By using the TMS to easily, quickly, and efficiently walk them through all of the functions – while also successfully tracing back several animals as a part of their audit process, we have saved money on each audit.” – RaeMarie Knowles
- Ability to quickly isolate individual animals – “The USDA requires that we keep this animal data, tied back to original ranch sources, in case there is ever a need for a quick traceback to mitigate or manage an animal disease. With this TMS, Legacy Verified is able to trace an animal through the supply chain within seconds, saving valuable time in an emergency.” – RaeMarie Knowles
Conclusion
Legacy Verified was able to improve the quality, dependability, and efficacy of their data by replacing the Excel workbook they had outgrown with a streamlined and efficient custom Power Apps application. By incorporating automated flows from Power Automate and changes to their web request form using SurveyJS, they can now serve their customers more quickly and provide them with a more streamlined experience.
About Legacy Verified
Legacy Verified is a team of multi-generational cattle ranchers and experienced cattle industry professionals committed to providing producers with the most trusted, cost-effective, and efficient verification services in the industry. They offer USDA PVP Program services for cattlemen and women nationwide, and create, administer, and manage a variety of private label programs for America’s livestock producers.
Learn more at www.legacyverified.com.
