Case Study: Silver Fern Farms grows market share by visualising untapped suppliers with Tableau Software

Silver Fern Farms Increasing Market Share through Visualising Untapped Suppliers

Silver Fern Farms, a New Zealand processor and exporter of lamb, beef and venison with about 16,000 farmer-shareholders, 22 processing sites and nearly NZ$2 billion in revenue, needed a way to identify untapped suppliers and understand animal-quality issues across a vast, distributed supply base. The company wanted a BI solution that would make large, geospatial datasets easy to explore and that internal users would adopt quickly—something its existing Microsoft stack couldn’t present in an appealing, interactive way.

Working with partner Montage, Silver Fern Farms deployed Tableau Desktop and Server to map procurement and geospatial data, embed visualisations in SharePoint and give analysts and managers intuitive, low‑training tools to slice-and-dice information. The visual maps revealed farms not currently supplying the company and highlighted competitor-supplied areas, enabling targeted canvassing, faster claims analysis and broader use across sales, finance and corporate teams—delivering tangible gains in engagement and increased market share.

Silver Fern Farms

Stewart Cowen

Enterprise Systems Manager