Skip to main content Skip to footer
Case study

The challenge

Netherlands-based Lely, an international family business in the agricultural sector, develops and markets state-of-the-art dairy farm robots. In the dairy farming sector, maintaining sustainable operations and using the latest innovations is important, for both farmers and animals. This approach, however, sometimes means farmers switch to the latest models even though their existing equipment still works. The trend not only drives demand for new equipment but also contributes to the plethora of dairy farmers looking for older machines, resulting in a growing second-hand market of dairy robots. Lely’s goal was to service the second-hand dairy robot market and guarantee the quality of its products. It reached out to Cognizant to develop an innovative digital platform that dairy farmers could use to buy and sell pre-owned machines in a transparent, reliable way via the Lely Center franchise network.

Our approach

Lely chose Cognizant due to our standing in the space and expertise in the technology behind the proposed solution. Also important was the business’s confidence in our ability to create a solution that could be scaled for the long term. Our recommendation of a central data hub with various touchpoints and a human-centered design was the final point to convince Lely that Cognizant would be the right partner.

We used an omnichannel approach that engages users on their preferred channel while maintaining transaction management on the Lely platform. This cloud-native platform uses AWS components in a microservices architecture to enable the quick build-out of functionalities. Serverless computing keeps costs low and Lely pays only for the services it uses.

Helping farmers find high-quality used Lely robots

We reached the goal of getting Lely to market quickly, from sign on to launch, delivering the all-new Used Lely platform in three months. This new trading platform connects the full ecosystem of customers, leads and distribution partners, who can support the sales journey and emphasize the Lely brand, its product quality and service. On the Used Lely platform, dairy farmers can easily search for pre-owned machines and review maintenance history dating back three years. The platform also connects Lely customers with the right Lely Center.

50%

market share in the used dairy robot marketplace

3,100

monthly visitors in the first half year after soft launch

15%

of all Lely Centers around the world used the platform two months after launch