Easter Show embraces eNVDs

Established in 1823, the Sydney Royal Easter Show may be steeped in history, but its recent push to move cattle exhibitors and vendors onto electronic National Vendor Declarations (eNVDs) shows that its eyes are firmly focused on the future.

Here, Lucinda Ross, Cattle Events Manager for the Royal Agricultural Society NSW (RASNSW) explains how she worked with the eNVD adoption team at Integrity Systems Company (ISC) to drive a shift to digital consignments.

“It started when a member of our Cattle Committee queried why we were still using the paper NVDs. That prompted me speak to Renelle Jeffrey from ISC’s adoption team and it just grew from there,” she said.

Lucinda met with the members of ISC’s adoption, tech and communications teams to discuss options for getting these producers on board. Initially, they discussed producing a webinar to take producers through the process, but eventually landed on a short demonstration video.

“ISC’s eNVD expert Peter Quigley filmed the process from start to finish and we focused on addressing the most commonly asked questions that would come up with the paper NVDs,” she said.

“The video was included in our pre-show communications, and I had people coming up to me at the show saying they'd watched it and used it to step themselves through the process, which was great.”

Tailoring simple solutions

Lucinda explained she had some initial concerns about being able to track that the eNVDs had been received – something that had been relatively simple when paper NVDs were handed over.

“We needed a simple solution to ensure the eNVDs were carefully tracked, so I created an eNVD vendor/exhibitor report which enabled me to check each eNVD off against that list as they came in,” she said.

"I was then able to share that report with our livestock agent who manages the sales, together with scanned copies of the small number of paper NVDs we received.

“That meant no paperwork to hand over this year – just an electronic file emailed to the agent.”

Seeing the ease and efficiency

Lucinda said she could see there was a real enthusiasm for adopting the eNVD, particularly usage of the eNVD Livestock Consignments mobile app.

“On a couple of occasions, I was helping exhibitors finish their eNVDs via the app on their mobile phones and they were both very pleasantly surprised by how simple and efficient it was to do it from their phone,” she said.

"Also, when they entered our Property Identification Code (PIC) the eNVD auto-populated the ‘consign to’ details so they didn't have to go searching for any further information, which is a big time-saver when you’re on the move.”

Increasingly popular option

The uptake of eNVDs extended beyond the show’s cattle events.

“Logging on to myMLA, I could see that we were getting plenty of eNVDs coming in for the sheep and goats, so a lot of the other spaces are clearly using it as well.”

Lucinda acknowledged there was still a small number of paper NVDs coming through this year, but thinks the books are losing popularity.

“I had people coming through saying they were doing a paper NVD just to finish their NVD book, because they’d already paid for it,” she said. “I think there’s probably still quite a few people in that position.”

“I think having seen how successful the eNVD has been for us this year, we’re likely to reach a point in the next few years where we’ll have phased out the paper NVDs.”