Revolutionising rural business efficiency with technology

What a difference a couple of decades makes. I last visited the glorious Ashcombe Estate at Tollard Royal, Wiltshire, in 2001. Back then, the 1,134-acre estate was up for sale, and I was the Land & Farms Editor at Farmers Weekly despatched to write about the charms of the property, which was once the home of society photographer Cecil Beaton.

The estate was sold, with much media fanfare, to the filmmaker Guy Ritchie and his then-wife, the pop singer Madonna. Fast forward to 2023, and it’s clear Guy’s love affair with Ashcombe, originally bought for its stunning shoot, continues unabated.

Ashcombe’s steep valleys and rolling fields – now farmed regeneratively with the assistance of our Head of Agri-Consultancy Tom Heathcote – are as beautiful as ever, but the estate is also a hive of industry, home to the lauded Gritchie Brewery, guest accommodation and various enterprises crafting artisan fire tables and ingenious mobile cabins.

This time around, I’ve been joined on my visit by Elin Jones, Knight Frank’s Head of Rural Client Finance, who has played a pivotal role in helping the estate develop its range of diversified enterprises and integrate each one seamlessly into the wider business.

Watch how Knight Frank can transform the financial management of your business below: 

“Everything is held in the cloud,” Elin explains. “This makes it easy for anybody to access all the numbers, wherever they are in the world.”

Invoices and the like are scanned straight into the system via an app on a mobile phone. With no paperwork to shuffle around, the accounting process is much more efficient meaning performance reporting data is available in real time.

“When Knight Frank first took over the estate, it could take up to three months to really get an accurate picture of where we were,” says Estate Manager Brendan Raisbeck. “Now it just takes a swipe or two on my phone to see exactly what’s going on and approve invoices. It saves a huge amount of time.”

Elin uses a range of accounting and financial management tools to help her clients. “These days, we don’t need to rely on one package because we can select from a range of programmes that all talk seamlessly to each other.

"We just layer up what the client needs, whether it’s payroll, till systems, stock management systems or even rental property management systems into what we call an ‘appstack’. This is much more cost-efficient and offers a great deal of flexibility.

“It helps us create bespoke solutions for our clients as they develop, whether they are a traditional farming estate or a highly diversified business like Ashcombe.”

Given the increasingly volatile world we live in, such flexibility is vital for businesses that need to make quick decisions. The Covid-19 pandemic, for example, struck not long after the Gritchie Brewery was set up, meaning the business needed to switch rapidly from mainly supplying casks of ale to local pubs to offering bottles of beer online to individual consumers locked down at home.

“We were able to integrate the order system with the website and accounts system, which meant the switch could be made really quickly,” says Elin. Brendan adds: “The new e-commerce business that Elin helped facilitate enabled us to keep the brewery running and kept people employed.”

Elin is quick to emphasise that using cloud-based systems doesn’t replace hands-on client relationships. “Having so much data at our fingertips has helped us build a close relationship with the estate so we understand their needs and what’s happening on the ground. That relationship means Andrew and Brendan come to us when they have these new ideas so we can help from the outset.”

So what are Guy’s latest plans? “We are shortly going to be opening a new bar and restaurant at the airfield that will help make it more of a destination for visitors and bring together different elements of the Ashcombe Estate, like the brewery,” reveals Andrew.

I’m sure next time I visit Ashcombe, there will be more exciting developments in the offing, all facilitated by Elin’s innovative cloud-based accounting and finance management systems.

Gritchie Brewery Estate

Profitable placemaking: advice from an expert

Using his experience gained in the English wine sector, James Osborn, a viticulture expert in our Rural Consultancy team, shares some of the ways he's helped clients create a thriving community.

Create a brand with a purpose

In a crowded English wine market, the need to create a distinct and strong brand has never been more important. Strong brands help shortcut a conversation to a sale (people think less about the purchase and need less incentive to buy), reduce price sensitivity and justify a more premium price point.

Don’t think that creating a  logo and label is enough: a brand needs to delight people and have genuine meaning in their lives.

Brands should be distinct and different in their market to help drive value, and a purpose-led brand will drive it even further by building a community around the reasons why the brand exists, not just what it does.

From subscription to a membership model

One way to build a valuable community is through membership of your brand and business. The English wine industry is dominated by subscription-based models.

Buying direct from the vineyard saves the consumer money and gives the business a reliable sales rate, improving the gross margin on their profit and loss.

It's also very transactional and a wasted opportunity to create a valued connection with customers. A membership model, on the other hand, creates experiences, not just transactions, allowing people to get a step closer to the brand and the people behind it.

Share your vision, be clear about your purpose, and people will become your greatest ambassadors, helping to lower your customer acquisition cost. Being interested in people, not just interesting to them, will create opportunities to form a highly effective hive for new product innovation.

Using behavioural economics to create thriving communities

I am a big fan of behavioural economics, and I have used it to build more profitable businesses through a better understanding of human behaviour. Mastering it means that brands can connect more meaningfully and effectively with their customers, trigger habitual behaviour and rituals, and in turn, create thriving communities.

In practice, it can be as simple as reframing an existing product in a different way in order to get a different response. It is sometimes more about eliminating things that cause barriers to purchase than creating something new. Equally, small investments or changes can have a very big effect.

Authority bias

Where a person overvalues the opinion of a person with perceived authority and tends to comply with what they say. Brand ambassadors recruited from your own customer base are one such example.

Whether leading winery experiences or simply hosting your events, their passion for the brand will be infectious, and their opinion will be valued highly for its authenticity.

Social norms and proof

Day-to-day behaviour is influenced by what we perceive to be the prevailing norm. People buy products and experiences that enhance their standing amongst their peers through online reviews and mass social acceptance.

Creating opportunities to capture those moments (what's often called being “Instagrammable”) is one thing. Making it easy to share those moments is another.

Piggy-backing

For new and less familiar experiences, such as visiting a winery, you can create greater community engagement by piggy-backing on existing activities such as food- or recreation-led events.

Download The Rural Report 2023/24