Case Study: Farmers Trading Company achieves paperless HR and faster payroll with M-Files

Farmers Trading Company - Customer Case Study

Farmers Trading Company, a 113-year-old New Zealand retailer with about 4,000 employees across 59 stores and support centres, faced a growing paper problem in HR. Payroll and onboarding relied on internal mail, date‑stamped trays and boxes and a three-step manual audit that was slow, error-prone and created risks for lost confidential documents and compliance breaches.

Working with Sharp, Farmers deployed M-Files Cloud Vault with e-signatures and mobile access, enabling remote payroll processing during COVID and removing dependence on physical mail. Metadata-driven search, strict permission controls and automated workflows made document retrieval fast, improved auditability and compliance, cut huge volumes of paper and freed HR staff to focus on higher‑value work, with plans to expand M-Files across more HR functions.

Farmers Trading Company

Lisa Black

Payroll Manager