Nuffield scholar strives for customer satisfaction

There is a simple way that farming businesses can increase their competitive advantage, a Nuffield scholar who runs a pasture-raised egg subscription business says. We reveal her secret.

Fresh take: Farmers should be more intune with their customer requirements. Picture: Zoe Phillips

SARAH Sivyer doesn’t mince her words.

The 15-year veteran of the corporate world, who runs a pasture-raised egg subscription business comprising about 2000 layer hens at Eccleston in the NSW Hunter Valley, is passionate not just about agriculture but also taking the industry to the next level.

She says by developing a greater level of customer intimacy, farming businesses can increase their competitive advantage by creating customer value and instilling a culture of continuous improvement.

Sarah recently completed a Nuffield scholarship, travelling to Japan, Israel, the UK, the US, the Philippines, Italy, the Netherlands, as well as domestically, to explore how farming businesses were enhancing what she says are the “three pillars” of operational excellence, customer intimacy and product quality, to generate more value for their customer.

During her travels Sarah said she visited entrepreneurial farmers to identify businesses that looked to create customer value and instil a culture of continuous improvement.

“Excellent businesses are obsessed with their customers,” Sarah said.

“These businesses do not assume what their customer’s desire, they ask, or better still they spend time with their customers as they are consuming their product.

“Creating value involves getting close to customers as only customers can define value.”

In her scholarship report, she said the key to deriving business growth from greater customer value, lay in identifying opportunities and creating an emotional connection with customers with the same energy that would go into pursuing improvements in production.

“This has become even more evident during 2020, with businesses facing significant pressures due to COVID-19,” Sarah said.

“For many businesses, one of the benefits of delivering increased value for their customers has been greater resilience to the current challenging market conditions.”

Customer focus: Nuffield scholar Sarah Sivyer.

LONG-HELD PASSION

SARAH is a fifth-generation farmer with her family working the paddocks around Ecclestone, northeast of Singleton, since the 1850s.

They traditionally ran a mixed beef and dairy farm before exiting dairy in 2001 to purely concentrate on beef.

Sarah returned to the property in 2017 and founded her Just Been Laid egg subscription business to complement the beef business.

Farming is a passion for the family with Sarah’s brother, David, running urban farms across Newcastle with his Feedback Organic business, which operates under a closed-loop system where cafes, pubs and restaurants return their food waste, it is turned into compost and later used on the farms.

The Just Been Laid business sees about 60 per cent of the eggs produced sold through an online subscription model with the remainder going into the local wholesale cafe and restaurant market.

Sarah said as a farmer, the online subscription ensured predictable cash flow and demand.

“For the customer, their value is created in receiving eggs no more than 48 hours old in a very convenient location,” she said.

“Customers simply sign up online and select how many eggs they would like each week and then choose the hub (a local cafe) they would like to collect from.”

Sarah said the initial hope of the business model was that the community, when collecting their weekly eggs, would also support the local cafe they were collecting from.

She said if subscribers were away for holidays or forget to collect their eggs, they are donated on their behalf immediately to OzHarvest.

“To date, in combination with our weekly donations, we have donated close to 30,000 eggs or the equivalent of 15,000 meals as part of this business model,” Sarah said.

STUDY POWER

SARAH said her interest in continuous improvement began 15 years ago when, as a chemical engineer, she trained to become an accredited Lean Six Sigma Black Belt in business transformation.

She was working for BHP Billiton at the time and said this created opportunities to work on projects that delved deep into organisational culture and strategy while at the same time validating my love for data and statistics.

An appetite for learning saw her complete a Masters in Business Administration through Oxford University in the UK, which she said “solidified my desire to eventually start my own business one day down the track while also recognising the immense power in diversity of thought”.

She remained overseas after completing her studies at Oxford and in food security with Syngenta in Switzerland, helping developing its commercial strategy for working with smallholder farmers “who at the time, numbered close to one billion across the world”.

On her return to Australia, Sarah took up a role with the International Finance Corporation, a division of the World Bank, and later Rabobank’s food and agri research team.

Sarah said her Nuffield scholarship studies were relevant to any business, in any industry.

She said the overriding takeaway for her was that farmers faced challenges everywhere, however, “the businesses that stand out are those with founders with an absolute passion for excellence”.

In her report recommend­ations, Sarah said farmers should seek to create customer value “by speaking with customers and asking what the competition is doing or better still spend time with customers while they use your product”.

“Get close to customers and understand their emotional motivators,” she said.

“Pursue customer value with the same energy that is spent on improving production.”

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