Brandt: Beam me up

For Brandt customers, Connected Support is the next best thing to teleporting.

Brandt is using John Deere’s JDLink technology to serve customers in diverse and non-traditional ways.

This is an Ag Gear special advertising feature brought to The Weekly Times readers by Brandt.

A tractor with a GPS receiver on its roof. Rows upon rows of crops in arrow-straight lines. Two decades ago, these signs of precision agricultural technologies would have been unusual. Today they’re all around us. Farmers have embraced technology for good reason: it increases accuracy, efficiency, and uptime.

A less visible but even more valuable innovation for the agricultural industry is connected technologies. While the technology itself is not new — John Deere has offered JDLink™ for more than 10 years — what is new is the range of connected machines available from Deere and how dealers like Brandt use them to serve customers in non-traditional ways.

What is JDLink? This SIM card-fitted modem connects your machine to local cell networks, allowing dealers and operators to access it digitally. When your machine broke down in the past, you had to call the dealership to book a time to bring your machine in or get a technician on site. Even with the best parts availability and service responsiveness — which Brandt is well known for — there is bound to be some downtime (especially if the weather doesn’t cooperate).

JDLink is a SIM card-fitted modem that connects agricultural machines to local cell networks, so dealers and operators can access it seamlessly and digitally.

John Deere connectivity enables Brandt to minimise downtime even further by adding a new set of tools to its service departments. John Deere Connected Support™ is a digital suite that allows dealerships to work remotely to diagnose issues, develop solutions before making on-site visits, and in some cases fully resolve an issue without even touching the machine.

John Deere connectivity enables Brandt to minimise downtime even further by adding a new set of tools to its service departments.

All 5-Series tractors and larger and GPS ProGators are connected from factory, with more models to be added in the future. Modems can also be fitted to older Deere and non-Deere machines with varying access to data.

Technology integration specialist, Siobhan Lynch, notes how one of the Connected Support tools, the screen-sharing Remote Display Access (RDA), allows her to do her job more efficiently:

“Based in Melbourne but looking after 15 branches across Australia and 17 in New Zealand, I can’t be everywhere all at once. But with the use of RDA, it’s like I’m right there with the customer,” she says. “Just the other week, we had a customer in the Taranaki region of New Zealand whose display had stopped working. Within 45 minutes, I had talked the customer through several button presses on his screen, diagnosed the issue, got him a demo activation until a new one was ordered, and he was on his way.”

Service Advisor Remote is another Connected Support tool that Brandt service departments have in their toolbox. Teams can remotely connect to a machine to read trouble codes, carry out tests on certain controllers, or set recordings to capture those annoying intermittent issues that never seem to happen when a technician is on site. By checking for codes before they work on a machine, technicians can order parts in advance or identify additional issues, allowing them to do the work all at once, keeping downtime to a minimum.

Brandt service technician Will Lawless says, “Even when you know you’re going to do a service on a machine, it’s handy to check for codes beforehand. Then if something unexpected comes up, you are prepared before you go, and you can highlight it to the customer. The customer would rather know than get a shock mid service”.

Service Advisor Remote is another Connected Support tool that Brandt service departments have in their toolbox.

Sometimes all it takes to fix a trouble code is a software update. With Remote Software, a technician can send software packages to certain controllers, ask you to accept the download, and resolve the issue without ever being there in person.

Just as perfectly straight rows of crops set some farmers apart from the competition 20 years ago, Connected Support can give your operation a leg up today and in the future. Hauling your farm equipment in for service is so 20th century. Now you can say, “Beam me up,” and Brandt will be there. Talk to your local Brandt dealer to ensure your machine is connected or to get Connected Support setup! To find Brandt dealerships in Australia, visit brandt.ca/au.