Christian Smith Agriculture
Christian and Diana Smith set up Christian Smith Agriculture in 1980. Based in Doublebois near Liskeard, the company sells and supplies tractors and other agricultural machinery from its large retail and workshop premises.
Recently, the company has also diversified into quad bikes and quadricycles and now has one of the largest selections in the South West.
Broadband was installed in July 2005 and in the last year, Christian and Diana have seen their way of working transformed as a result.
Diana says “Now we mostly order from manufacturers online. Because of the permanent connection and the speed of broadband, ordering now take a fraction of the time it used to. Our processes have all been streamlined with the manufacturers and the whole system is far more efficient all round. In addition, some manufacturers offer discounts for online ordering, so this increases our margins.”
“We are also selling more as a result of broadband.” Diana continues. Previously customers would have to visit us to see, for instance, our stock of second hand machinery. Now we are finding that increasingly, customers are sending us an enquiry, which we can then follow up by emailing them photos of the items they are interested in. They are confident enough to make a purchase without having to come here and see it in person. So it saves the customer time and, importantly, it means that broadband has allowed us to serve customers who live outside our geographical catchment area.
“This is brilliant! It means that our business has made a huge step forward – we can now reach out to customers nationally rather than just locally.”
Christian continues “Broadband also helps save us time with the everyday admin items. For example, we now bank online, which is great. It is also easy to get up to date photography of our stock in the monthly magazines because now we photograph them ourselves and email them straight through to them. Most of our communications with Valtra and the other manufacturers are now by email – and more and more of our customers are also using email to communicate with us.
“The end result is that the company is more efficient and productive, saving time and money, as well as reaching out to customers we could never have attracted before.
“Broadband has transformed the way we run our business and opened up new horizons for us.”
