Ohio Soybean Council & Ohio Soybean Association

Discussions kicked off when an Ohio Soybean Council board member effectively articulated the central issue: “I need to be able to manage the distribution of millions of dollars of checkoff funds from my tractor, in the middle of my field, in the middle of the night, without a WiFi connection. Can you build us a custom project management portal that can do that?”

The Ohio Soybean Council manages significant funding for projects aimed at improving the profitability of Ohio’s soybean farmers. Their initial web portal, built on a custom Drupal platform, was outdated. Switchbox was contracted to develop a modern custom web portal using Ruby on Rails. This upgrade aimed to decrease the time project managers and board members spent managing fund distribution. The existing site had limitations in web printing, issues with numerous reports, and general UI/UX problems on newer browsers. Furthermore, the requirement for a high-speed internet connection for board members posed a challenge, especially during the busy planting and harvesting seasons.