By Tonye Gross
Tonye Gross
Program Director, MIDAS
Farm Service Agency
We are very excited to announce that MIDAS is approaching a major milestone, the release of Business Partner Go-Live on December 17th. We would like to thank our MIDAS project team, Super Users, Change Agents, and State Trainers for their commitment and hard work that has led us to our on-schedule Go-Live. We could never thank you enough for your contribution and remarkable outcome.
As you know, MIDAS is a key FSA initiative to “Modernize and Innovate the Delivery of Agricultural Systems” and provide a sustainable long-term solution resulting in increased efficiencies and reengineered business solutions. Moving forward, Business Partner will be the system of entry and record and serve as a centralized source for all customer information, empowering users to minimize manual steps in this process.
Overall, CRM provides comprehensive and robust processes and tools that enable simplified and convenient methods for producers and our employees to interact with farm programs. FSA is excited to announce that the CRM Business Partner deployment will Go-Live next week and will be a welcome addition to Farm Records and Product Master as we continue moving forward as a modernized agency.
Following a period of Customer Care post the Business Partner release, the CRM system will enter the sustainment phase of Operations and Maintenance (O&M). At that point, the MIDAS program will have successfully established a sustainable platform for future modernization, which will allow FSA to optimize the use and value of information technology.
MIDAS was the initial step towards a fully modernized FSA, but there is more work to do to provide FSA with the complete tools needed to serve our country’s farmers and ranchers. FSA will continue to move forward with the next phase of Agency transformation. After the CRM Business Partner release, FSA will continue efforts to ensure the operational availability, security, and integrity of our current applications and services. These efforts aim to provide continuous business process improvements to our applications and services. They also support changes to program legislation, business requirements, and technology, enabling new customer models that support FSA as it becomes the gateway for farmers and ranchers to access rural and agricultural support services.
This Go-Live is a tremendous achievement for our team and for the Agency. It represents years of planning and hard work, and signifies the field’s strong aptitude for modernizing and innovating the way we do business. Due to your dedication, end users are now equipped with comprehensive processes and tools that enable simplified and convenient methods to access farm programs. We will continue to rely on these products moving forward as the Agency continues its modernization journey.
