A clogged pump fails to deliver nutrients across your aquaponic farm. A power outage disables LED lights in every zone of your vertical facility. You underestimate your harvest labor needs and don't have enough employees to fill your orders. These are risks that growers face every day. "It's no wonder that farms now look to agtech solutions for support that affords them more control over operations and production", the team with Artemis believes. And that vision got them an 8 million investment.
Lack of tools
This is something Allison Kopf understood four years ago. After years of working for a large commercial greenhouse in the USA, Kopf became frustrated with the lack of tools and technology available for managing facility-wide data, operations, sales and compliance. Her degree in physics and computer science came in handy when she decided to build such a tool herself: Agrilyst. Now, four years later, the software platform she developed—soon to be renamed Artemis—has been implemented in greenhouse, indoor and hybrid facilities across the United States, Europe and the Middle East. From berries, to herbs, to leafy greens and cannabis, Agrilyst supports the production of over 800 crop varietals.
Becoming Artemis
Recently they announced their $8m Series A round of financing." The round was led by Astanor Ventures, along with Talis Capital, and with participation from current investors New York Ventures and iSelect Ventures. With the new round of funding, the company welcomes two new Directors — Dr. Kathleen Merrigan and Charlie O’Donnell.
The name Agrilyst changed to Artemis. "We also wanted a name that is pronounceable for our users and as we continue to stretch across the Americas and out into Europe, we recognized that Agrilyst just wasn’t easy to pronounce for most languages", Allison Kopf explains. "I’m incredibly excited about the new brand, which we’ll be fully unveiling in early June."
Fits into existing systems
“Artemis is a Cultivation Management Platform that can be used alongside ERP systems. But we don't focus only on cultivation, we also track workflows, manage labor costs and deliver regulatory compliance schemes all from one place,” Mikhail Hutton, VP of Marketing and Customer Success, explains. “We help growers move away from pen and paper, whiteboards and Excel. Our platform facilitates growers making data-driven decisions around what they're growing, how they're growing it and the labor required to get it done. Our CMP fits into existing systems, too. Customers don't have to rip out their existing infrastructure to use us, we incorporate tools they have already implemented into their operations.”
Task and labor management
A grower starts with setting a growth cycle—think of this as a schedule and timeline—for any given crop batch. The platform—which becomes smarter over time using insights from the grower's historical and current farm data—provides task lists for any and all actions related to said batch from seed to harvest. Because Artemis can be used on smartphones, tablets and desktops, users with are able to see completed, outstanding and upcoming tasks—for that day, that week, that month—from anywhere in their facility or even remotely. Finally, managers have insight into the efficiency of work done by their team and can ensure accountability for all team members.
Smarter over time
According to Hutton,“our visualization tools provide growers with historical and current data insights to help them analyze and forecast expected yield and facility productivity. Artemis tells you what you can expect to harvest on a certain day. As you interact with it, it gets smarter over time. Our technology is built API first, allowing growers to connect accounting, ERP, sales forecasting, weather/nutrient system and sensor data, so that you have a full view of your farm all on one platform.”
Although the CMP is designed "by growers, for growers" with a user experience focused on serving growers, facility and compliance managers, analysts, team leads and owners, each customer is also provided an experienced account manager to lean on.
New updates
In the coming months, Artemis plans to rollout even more new features and updates to their platform, maintaining their position as the market leading Cultivation Management Platform for enterprise greenhouse and indoor facilities.
For more information:
Agrilyst
info@agrilyst.com
www.agrilyst.com