Horticulture and livestock businesses don’t keep everyone in one office. There are warehouses and seed rooms, staff out on properties, and people who need the business system from wherever they are. Their IT has to reach all of it.
Between 19 August 2025 and 18 August 2026, five horticultural supply, fibre and livestock businesses we support raised 180 tickets with us, including replies, with 36.2 hours of work. Here’s what the year involved.
A data project with an outside consultant
The biggest single job was for a horticultural supplier working with an outside consultant on a data project, 5.25 hours across March and April 2026. We set up a new user account and a laptop for the person doing the work, including the programming tools the consultant’s setup guide called for, and set up multi-factor sign-in with them on their first day.
The fiddly part was SharePoint. The project’s automated data flows depended on a fixed folder structure, so the new user needed to create and edit files in some libraries without changing the folders, read-only access in others, and edit access across one. It took a few rounds with the consultant to get every library right, and the consultant confirmed it was all working at the end.
A new company, then a new name
A related fibre business needed IT set up for a new company, a three-hour job in December 2025, followed by a shared drive for the company’s documents. In February 2026, the company’s name change took another two and a half hours.
Staff away from the office
Several jobs were about reach. A July 2026 request covered mobile devices for a team that needed remote access to the accounting software on the server. A staff member asked for a VPN to work remotely. We added antivirus to a computer at one of the livestock properties, and helped with an iPad that couldn’t upload to OneDrive.
Planned internet outage notices from a provider were forwarded to us three times, which let us know what was coming.
Early questions about AI
The supplier started asking about AI tools early. A 45-minute conversation in October 2025 was followed by questions about Copilot, an email account for an AI tool subscription and, in August 2026, a broader question about AI subscriptions. A livestock business asked for approval to use an AI app with its Microsoft account.
That’s the right way round: ask first, then sign up. Every AI tool connected to a work account can reach some of the business’s data, so it’s worth deciding which ones are fine before staff connect them.
Invoices held by the filter
24 times in the year, staff at these businesses asked for a held email to be released. Many were invoices, statements, orders and credit notes. The filter was doing its job holding them, and staff did the right thing by asking rather than digging through spam.
Phones in the warehouse and seed room
Smaller phone jobs included a seed room cordless phone, a warehouse closure message, office hours and public holiday greetings, and the phone system reaching its maximum number of extensions.
What to check if your staff work away from the office
- Can staff who work away reach the business system securely, without sharing a login?
- Does every account have multi-factor sign-in, including those used on shared devices?
- Do provider outage notices reach someone who’ll act on them?
- Have you decided which AI tools staff can connect to work accounts?
If you’d like us to look at how your remote sites and staff connect, get in touch.