Alexander Elin is the mastermind and owner of the Smart4Agro platform

People want to know about the people they are dealing with. This business practice has coexisted with business relationships for centuries. So we decided to tell our partners and clients about our CEO, we present him to you - Elin Alexander.

Alexander Elin was born in Yaroslavl in 1974, graduated from high school in 1991 and entered the Yaroslavl State Agricultural Academy with a degree in Zootechnics. While still a student, Alexander became interested in computers and programming, and in 1993 he co-founded an IT company that began to develop software for accounting. After graduating from the Agricultural Academy in 1996, Alexander focused on business. Having become the sole owner of the company in 1997, he transformed it towards the production and sale of computer equipment. In 2005, the company began to cooperate with Microsoft Corporation, and over the 15-year history of cooperation has achieved phenomenal success, was recognized in 2010 as the Partner of the Year in the world in one of the nominations, and became 15 times the Partner of the Year in Russia in various nominations.

Over the 27 years of the company's existence, Alexander has repeatedly transformed his business, from a software development company, a computer equipment and software sales company, a company that implements solutions from world developers such as Microsoft, VMware, HP, Intel, Cisco, etc. In 2010, ALAN began to engage in software analytics (Software Assets Management), and in 2015 entered the field of business intelligence. Actually, at the moment, business analytics, predictive and prescriptive analytics are the main direction of the company's business.

In 2016, the company had projects in the field of analytics in agriculture, and this moment can be considered a moment of rebirth of the company's strategy. The knowledge gained by Alexander during his studies at the university helped to form a new approach to agribusiness and analytics. The first projects were mainly in the field of analysis of various climatic factors affecting the production of agricultural products in poultry enterprises and in greenhouses.

“The analysis of data in projects for the production of agricultural products made it possible to form a clear conviction that in any business, and even more so in such a complex production process as agribusiness, there are no trifles. Any little thing affects the final result, but, on the other hand, in order to form a new reality, to make a qualitative shift in business, it is often enough to make not so much effort. The Paretto rule works great - make 20% of the effort, and you will get 80% of the result, the main thing is to understand what kind of effort we need to make. Business analyst helps to solve this problem ”. - said Alexander.

The uniformity of the problematic, for example, at the enterprises of greenhouses or dairy production, which does not strongly depend on the conditions of a particular agricultural producer, made us think about creating a service approach to solving these problems. The Smart4Agro platform was created, on which we began to combine all our agro solutions.

“In 2018, the company started developing a service for analytics of dairy production - Dairy Production Analytics, which was successfully launched in October at the Voschazhnikovo agricultural enterprise, by the end of the year the service was already operating on three farms, in 2019 on more than 20 farms. In 2019, the company began promoting the service to the international market. The work carried out in 2020 and 2021 allowed the formation of a partner network around the world, a lot of pilots on farms and the transition to the commercial operation of the service. The company is currently focused on the regions of South and Central America, North Africa, the Middle East and Asia - it is there that the main market for the service is large farms, with loose production and automated milking parlors. " - Alexander commented.

Alexander is the main ideologist and architect of the company's agricultural services, product development is under his direct supervision, in 2020 a holding version of the service was released, which allows you to combine, analyze and compare data and methods of work on various farms of one holding in a single analytical system.

“If someone had told me ten years ago that I would return to agriculture again, I would not have believed him. Nevertheless, I am glad that the knowledge that I gained in the distant nineties is useful now and helps to create unique solutions that contribute to qualitative changes in the business of our clients. " - said Alexander.

Of course, production cannot be unrelated to the economy. Therefore, in 2016, the development of a service in the field of management analytics - Business Scanner - was started. This service allows you to analyze all areas of the company's activity - finance, sales, production, logistics, marketing, personnel, etc., and make the right management decisions based on this data.

“We have created a wonderful product to support businessmen - Business Scanner. In three years, this product has grown from a highly specialized analytical solution to a full-fledged management analytics service. Just the other day, in July, we released a new version of the service, in which we radically changed its concept. If earlier the user needed to have quite significant knowledge and skills in the field of analytics in order to find this or that problem, now the service automatically finds various kinds of anomalies in sales, profit, cost, receivables or payables, and the user only has to make a decision and start implementing it. I have always said that first we must collect information, then analyze it, then work out a solution, and only then execute it. We are still solving the first two tasks in automatic mode, but we have already started solving the third and fourth tasks in this chain. " - said Alexander.

In its services, the company actively uses machine learning technologies to create and implement predictive analytics models.

“There is a Russian proverb -“ If I knew where to fall, I would have laid straws ”. We provide our clients with the opportunity to predict the course of certain business processes and implement such solutions in our products. " - Alexander commented.

The DPA service, which is actually a digital twin of dairy production, has the ability to predict animal reproduction, the volume and dynamics of milk production, and some diseases. Business Scanner, in turn, has the ability to forecast demand and sales for certain categories of customers. Yes, it doesn't seem so fantastic as it did a few years ago. Nevertheless, the company does not stop at forecasting and goes further in its products towards prescriptive analytics.

“To help our client not only understand what is happening with his business, but also to work out the right solutions - this is our task. But I see an opportunity not only in this. The technology of prescriptive analytics will make it possible to execute a decision made without human intervention. While this is not available in all spheres of activity, but the time is not far off when this progressive technology will help to make the business of our clients better, to make their product better, to make the life and health of the end consumer better. After all, this is what my business strategy is aimed at. " - Alexander shared his vision.