Smartplan and the Farmer: Visiting Fristrupminde

Last week we visited a customer, who at first sight seems like an unusual customer of Smartplan. But Smartplan isn’t only for bars and restaurants. There’s a very special type of customer that benefits from online employee scheduling as well: farmers. But how is Smartplan suitable for farming? That’s what we decided to find out by visiting Mike Timmermann on his farm Fristrupminde in Northern Jutland.

After a small detour through the dark forests of Northern Jutland, we arrive at Fristrupminde on a cloudy Thursday morning. Mike Timmermann, owner and manager of Fristrupminde, greets us in the yard in the friendly and laid-back manner that people from these parts of Denmark are so well known for. Mike invites us to look around the farm that he bought together with his wife Conny last year, after the previous owners went bankrupt. Together they own 235 dairy cattle, which on average deliver approximately 11,000 kilos of milk. Therefore, they milk the cows several times a day, which requires more employees than just Mike, who’s in charge of the daily operation of the farm:

”We have three full-time employees and a couple of school boys, who come to help us now and then. It can be a challenge to keep track of your work schedule, if it only exists on paper and your employees don’t bring it with them. Therefore, we needed a system to help us manage time and provide an overview of the shifts here at Fristrupminde.”

Consequently, Mike and his employees at Fristrupminde use Smartplan, which enables them to see who’s scheduled to work and who they are going to work with. Furthermore, the employees are able to swap shifts with each other and register if they have worked less hours than scheduled or overtime. These features are all accessible to them from their phones, which is a great advantage according to Mike, since everyone brings their phones everywhere today. By using Smartplan, Mike makes the everyday work at Fristupminde easier and avoids getting a call at 3:30 am, because the employees are in doubt about when to work.

“I benefit mostly from the copy functionality in Smartplan, which allows me to quickly create new schedules and avoid typing it all in from scratch. At the same time, I can easily set up new employees in the system, who can quickly register their time spent working, on their phones. It works very well for us here at Fristrupminde.”

In the running of the farm, Mike attempts to streamline the work process as much as possible in order for the working days, tasks and routines to be as structured as possible. This ensures a healthy running of Fristrupminde and makes the farming more efficient, which is something that Smartplan’s scheduling system contributes to as well. In this way, farming is modernized with apps, advanced technology and farm management software.

Before leaving Fristrupminde, we play with the curious kittens whizzing around in the stables, and we say hello to the one-months-old calves. As a goodbye salute, the farm’s dog, Balder, comes out to greet us cheerfully and the sun peeks out from the clouds, as we leave the farm and head back home to Aarhus. From this visit, we have gained new insight into how a modern farm is run in today’s Denmark.