About the client

Our client is a university research department working with the UK Department for Environment, Food & Rural Affairs (DEFRA). Their work focuses on analysing farm accounts and data across the country to provide insights that shape agricultural policy and sustainability initiatives.

The challenge

The department had to manage and analyse a large volume of farm accounts and financial records provided by a wide network of contributors. Their existing tools made data collection and analysis slow and inconsistent, creating bottlenecks for research teams. The process was error-prone, required significant manual effort and made it difficult to provide timely, reliable reporting back to DEFRA.

The solution

Hero Solutions developed a bespoke data management and analysis system tailored to the department’s needs. The platform:

• Streamlined the collection of farm account data from multiple sources.
• Automated complex data validation to reduce human error.
• Provided advanced reporting features for both internal research and DEFRA submissions.
• Gave researchers a secure, centralised hub for managing and sharing results.

The impact

• The new system has significantly reduced the time taken to process and analyse accounts.
• Result reliability has greatly improved.
• The department has been enabled to deliver more accurate insights to DEFRA.
• The project has strengthened the department’s ability to support evidence-based policy decisions, while also freeing researchers to focus more on analysis and less on administration.