SAP Lumira is Raising Fish

[Former Member]

Recently I had the ability to work with SAP Lumira for the first time against 19+ years of data collected on my father-in-law’s fish farm. In this blog I have summarized my experience.

From working with SAP Lumira for a very short period of time (<8 hours) I would describe it as a powerful, yet simple tool that can be used by companies of “ALL” sizes to leverage the data they collect as a powerful resource.

When I met my future father-in-law, Lynn Babington, in the early 90’s he was just a few years into running his own fish farming business, ARK Fisheries. All data collected from his approximately 300 or so fish ponds was recorded and filed on paper without a computer in sight. As a Computer Science major I recognized an opportunity that would be a win/win/win for both of us. Win #1: Developing a fish program for my senior project. Win #2: Getting my father-in-law’s business running more efficiently leveraging 21^st century technology. Win #3: His blessing to marry his daughter (the most important win of course;).

Fast forwarding 19+ years, I received a “A” on my senior project, my father-in-law runs his successful business using my fish program, and I’m still happily married to his daughter.

This is the part of the blog where I get back to SAP Lumira. While the fish program has collected over 19 years of data on over 15 million trout and sturgeon raised, other than providing automated calculations, a data repository, and some simple static reports, it’s not really helping Lynn’s business “Run Smarter”.

I sat down with Lynnfor a few hours at the fish farm last week to ask him the question “what data would help you run your business more efficiently?”. Out of that conversation I learned a lot. One important piece of data he asked for was to be able to analyze the performance of his fish ponds based on facility. This is because Lynn rents most of the ponds he uses at over 25 facilities. Having performance data for each facility can help him in rent negotiations with property owners, planning where to stock future fish, etc. After learning this I downloaded and installed the free Personal Edition of SAP Lumira to his computer on the spot. In less then one hour I was able to PREPARE the data collected from the fish program, VISUALIZE the required data by easily learning how to create a calculated attribute for “facility” derived from pond name, and COMPOSE a few story boards that would allow Lynn to see all the relevant data in one screen and dynamically manipulate the data for proper analysis.

As an SAP employeethis technology excites me. Even though my education background is in Computer Science my professional career has never included the title “developer”. The fact that I was able to take this SAP application and become proficient in such a short time with no training is a testament to what the SAP Lumira team has achieved. I’m proud to say ARK Fisheries, company of approximately 10 employees, RUNS SAP.

Stay tuned for a couple of follow up blogs focused on additional information I learned from Lynn on the potential of leveraging the “Internet of Things” or maybe more appropriately called the “Internet of Fish”.  

Bryan Whitmarsh | SAP Mentor | @bryanwhitmarsh