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I am from Pelotas, in the state of Rio Grande do Sul. I have a systems analyst background but I also have a master's degree in project management and human resources. I have been working in Checkplant for 18 years, I started in technical support but throughout my career I have had the opportunity to work in different divisions, so I have been able to learn a lot. Over time, in fact, I have been involved in processes in other areas as well, mainly in customer success, sales, and marketing, and today I am in charge of these three areas as well as human resource management. I joined Checkplant a few years after it was founded, later I became a partner ... so I basically built the company together with André, together with him and Felipe I worked for many years in the management of the company.
Yes, a lot. Brazil is a very large country and this poses quite a few challenges, for example from a logistical point of view. Also, smartphones did not yet exist when we started! Checkplant was really a pioneering venture in digital agriculture and I am very proud to have been part of this journey, it taught me so much. It was not easy though when you build something from scratch you have the opportunity to learn so much.
I think one of the main strengths is the strong relationship we have with agrifood because, having been pioneers in this area, we have learned everything by working side by side with farmers. We don't develop anything in the lab, our lab is the farms, and being so present in the farmers' lives allows us to know their processes in depth. Simply put, we are very attentive to the needs of the farms and we are on the side of the farmers, without any conflict of interest. Another strength of ours is the credibility that we have earned from the fact that we really offer a high-quality service and that we care a lot about after-sales because our priority is to make sure that every customer is able to use our service in a way that gets the most out of it. We have been able to retain our customers-some have been with us for 15 or 16 years! This for a technology company is a very positive achievement.
One strength is certainly that we really work with team spirit here, we really care about the company's goal and we are committed to achieving it. We are multidisciplinary. It's like a big family: everyone helps each other and is always available, no matter what specific area they belong to. Of course everyone has their own specialization, but we work together to build something beautiful. In addition, Checkplant relies heavily on human talent and gives great freedom to employees so that they can feel that they are part of the company and contribute to the common goal.
There are currently 65 of us.
One is undoubtedly transparency, which is crucial for us. We are extremely transparent, both among colleagues and with our clients. Then there is trust; we trust each other a lot. And I would say another key word is passion-we really care about what we do. The goal of bringing people, technology and agrifood together motivates us every day.
Partly it depends on the area because Brazil is a very large country and there are various crops that are important for the agricultural sector. But in general, it seems to me that technology is getting a lot of attention here in Brazil. Obviously production and export costs are always relevant topics for farmers however technology is seen as a strength, and in recent years both media and trade shows are paying a lot of attention to this.
Yes, absolutely, because here in Brazil farms work on very large areas and production costs are high, so there is a need to manage fields very efficiently. Our clients, for example, manage an average of 5 to 10 thousand hectares. Often when people talk about technology they think about the efficiency that can be achieved through it, and in fact I always say that we cannot manage what we do not measure. But the point is that technology also allows us to err less and still mitigate errors. Without a digital tool to measure our decisions, we cannot know if and where we are making mistakes. Every plantation has a maximum production potential, and each decision-making error that is made reduces the maximum production potential and wastes money. Therefore, when we talk about efficiency, we are also talking about the sustainability of farmers' activities, both economically and environmentally through awareness and rational use of water, energy and all inputs.
We had been looking for a partnership, investment or merger opportunity for some time, and the priority was to find the right partner for our business and our vision. So a company that was focused on sustainability and efficiency, and had a mission to help produce better through technology, to put technology at the service of agrifood. When xFarm Technologies found us and we met, we noticed a very strong synergy in terms of vision for the future and corporate culture. xFarm has a lot of success in Europe and Farmbox, our platform, has a lot of success in Brazil, which is a very important country for agrifood globally, and both of our companies aim to become global leaders in the industry. And while we share values, the different competencies we have complement each other very well. xFarm Technologies works with hardware, for example, a part of sensor technology that we didn't do, so it's a very positive integration, which will allow us at Checkplant to bring to Brazil everything that xFarm has already conquered in Europe, and help our customers even more. In my opinion, by bringing together the expertise of our companies, we will be able to achieve world leadership in technology for agriculture.
This is a really important year for us to make sure that this integration works as well as possible and to be able to function as one company, and I am very focused on helping as much as possible in this regard. Personally, being the head of sales, after-sales service and marketing, my main goal is to ensure that we have credibility in the market and that our customers have confidence in this integration, so that we can achieve our goal, which is to have great success here in Brazil together with xFarm Technologies.
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