WASHINGTON, D.C.,  – AgGateway, the non-profit organization with the mission to promote and enable the industry's transition to digital agriculture, is offering a limited-time 25% discount on 2018 rates for its Ag Industry Identification System (AGIIS) service, as an incentive to further boost use of standard identifiers in electronic connectivity between ag trading partners.

Ag retailers, manufacturers, distributors and software and data service providers that have never subscribed to AGIIS are encouraged to subscribe by May 11 to take advantage of the offer. The discount will then be applied to the pro-rated subscription rates for May - Dec. 2018. The offer is valid for new subscribers only.

"Spring season is here, and it's a great time to make sure companies are at maximum efficiency when it comes to reporting, inventory tracking and other key business processes," said AgGateway executive vice president and COO Brent Kemp. "Companies that rely on manual entry often find they need to do multiple corrections and reconciliations at the end of the season. You can greatly reduce or eliminate that problem through the use of standard identifiers and seamless, electronic communication.

"Our goal as a non-profit organization is to stimulate increased usage of the AGIIS service as a means to promote the ag industry's transition to digital agriculture, and to expand the use of information to maximize efficiency and productivity," Kemp added.

"Putting these electronic connections in place saves so much time. We can just import the information," said Jordan Kuhns, process analyst with Growmark. "During the busy season this allows people to focus on their business and not worry about paperwork. There's also significant improvement in keeping tabs on inventory." 

"Using AgGateway's AGIIS directory and AgGateway standardized message formats means our systems are more automated, accurate and timely - that allows our people to focus on serving our customers... Also, we have incorporated [barcoding] into our system," said Randy Fry, data process and information systems manager at Ceres Solutions. 

More testimonials from AGIIS users can be heard on a 4-minute video on the AgGateway website in the "Get Connected - AGIIS" section.

Companies throughout the industry use the AGIIS service to uniquely identify farmers, businesses, drop points, rail locations and more. These identifiers are standard in the industry - they are accepted by most chemical and seed manufacturers, fertilizer manufacturers, distributors and service providers, so they provide the essential building blocks of for the exchange of business data.

With AGIIS identifiers in a company's system, that company can easily share common business data with its distributors and suppliers; reduce internal costs associated with maintaining multiple partners' proprietary codes; align operational processes like sales and inventory reporting, ordering, delivery receipt, accounts payable and customer billing to reduce overhead and save time; and position the company to participate in traceability and transparency initiatives.