Sponsored: Brandt offers farmers connected support

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. Only two decades ago, these examples of precision agricultural technologies would have been highly unusual on any farm.

Today they’re all around us and increasingly, farmers are embracing technology for good reasons: it increases accuracy, efficiency and uptime.

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

But what exactly is JDLink? It’s a SIM card-fitted modem that connects your machine to local cell networks, so dealers and operators can access it seamlessly and digitally.

Previously, when your machine broke down, you had to call the dealership and book a time to bring your machine in, or get a technician on site. Even with the best parts availability and a responsive service — which Brandt are well known for — there is inevitably some downtime, especially if the weather doesn’t co-operate.

John Deere connectivity enables Brandt to further minimise downtime 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 and develop solutions before making on-site visits. In some cases, it can fully resolve an issue without even touching the machine.

All 5-Series tractors and larger models and all GPS ProGators are connected from factory and more models will include this feature in the future. Modems can also be fitted to older Deere and non-Deere machines and are able to provide access to varying degrees of data.

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.

Brandt Integrated Solutions Manager ANZ, Siobhan Lynch, pinpoints one of the Connected Support tools, the screen-sharing Remote Display Access (RDA), that allows her to do her job more efficiently.

“Being based in Melbourne but looking after 15 branches across Australia and nine 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. This allows them to complete the work all at once and keep downtime to a minimum.

“Even when you know you’re going to do a service on a machine, it’s handy to check for codes beforehand,” says Brandt service technician, Will Lawless.

“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.”

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 actually having to be there in person.

Just as perfectly straight rows of crops set some farmers apart from their competition 20 years ago, Connected Support can give your operation an edge today and in the future. And in 2023, hauling your farm equipment in for service is so 20th century. Now you can simply say, ‘Beam me up,’ and Brandt will be there.

Talk to your local Brandt dealer to ensure your machine is connected or to set up Connected Support. To find Brandt dealerships in Australia, visit brandt.ca/au.