Orderlii

Hone TEK Program 2

25 Sept 2023

About

Based in Melbourne, Victoria, founder James Davidson is a self described techpreneur
who is passionate about environmental sustainability. James grew up on a farm in the
South Africa goldfields and has a deep appreciation for sustainable food production. He
has extensive experience in technical product development having worked with a global
professional services agency for a couple of decades. James and his Orderlii team
wanted to make a difference to smallholder producers with diverse revenue channels to
maximise their business efficiency through automation of paper based systems and
processes.

Orderlii is based on the premise that their ingenious software helps small to medium
producers save time on order fulfilment. Orderlii encompasses capturing orders, picking
and packing, logistics management including route optimisation, invoicing and electronic
payment processing. Orderlii is also able to generate business insights to improve
customer operations through data driven decision making.

Hone Journey

Over the course of the HoneTEK program, James focussed mainly on identifying key
customer segments linked with channels and getting deep into examining the
characteristics of his target customer segments. Focussing on some niche areas was
initially challenging. James used his social mission values overlay to identify the
customer segments he wants to work with as well as customers that may naturally align
better with Orderlii’s mission. In this case, he has been able to focus on regenerative,
free range egg producers. This also leverages on his experience with early adopter
customers he has captured in this space to date. James is also focussing on
sustainably produced horticultural producers such as mixed veg farmers who may do
value adding as well. This drilling down into the specific customer segment has allowed
James to build a more effective go to market strategy.

James has also been able to identify powerful channel partners in the process, through
retail supermarket referrals to suppliers, who need help with the order fulfilment and
logistics processes. James is now working on tactics to leverage these referrals.

With Orderlii’s mission including social values, James is exploring how his business
structure might better facilitate this to include scalability and accountability in delivering
on the ‘non-commerical’ aspects of his business, through options such as creating a
social enterprise structure, use of community management tools and social media to
demonstrate to existing and potential customers, the delivery on the ESG focussed
deliverables.
James demonstrated improvement in his short pitch game during the course of the
program, through adoption of techniques such as the Gaddie pitch.

The Farmers2Founders HoneTEK program really helped Orderlii refine our
Value Proposition and Go to Market strategy. The F2F team and coaches
were always available to assist with feedback, useful content and
introductions. The HoneTEK Bootcamp was awesome. Apart from getting
great input from the team and peers, it gave the founders a feeling of real
comradery. I would highly recommend the HoneTEK program to agtech
startups.

What's Next

The focus for Orderlii in the next six to twelve months is on expanding traction in their
key customer segments as well as continuing the important process of validating
assumptions and reining the value proposition and approach to market. In addition to
this, James is focussing on leveraging channel partner referrals to grown his number of
customers and geographic reach.