“The finished result was an eye opener with some features even we had forgotten we had asked for,” said Tractor Pull New Zealand Chairman Vaughan Coy.

Tractor Pull New Zealand runs competitive tractor pulling events all over the country, the largest of which is at the National Agricultural Fieldays held at Mystery Creek near Hamilton.

The sport traditionally involves weighting tractor sleds with concrete blocks to create drag or ‘pull’ on the engine. This system makes accuracy difficult, time-consuming and prone to dangerous malfunctions.

Enter modern technology, and the innovation of weight transfer pulling instead of a manually weighted sled. This system lifts the tractor vertically up or down on electronic rams to leverage and transfer tractor weight into pull resistance.

The electronic rams are computer controlled, but the available software was unreliable, difficult to use, and largely unsuitable for a competition environment.

Company-X’s first job was to learn how a competition day was run from start to finish, noting all of the key events, important outcomes and potential efficiencies.

We developed a software application that enabled the tractor sled hardware to detect and provide simple, instant adjustments to tractor pull. It also managed all of the data and reporting on competition day, including competitors, classes, heats and final results.

The software greatly increases the efficiency and flexibility of events. Organizers no longer need to race all tractors of the same weight resistance together in one class. They can run mixed heats and re-runs as competitors are available, and leave race results and weight adjustments to their software.

“We came away feeling more confident in our brand-new software than we did when using our old software that had been in use for over two years! We have an application that is robust and feature-rich, yet retains the critical ease of use,” Vaughan said.

“The support and backup has extended well beyond our expectations with a willingness to see the application working as intended, not just as delivered.

“Tractor Pull New Zealand Inc has no hesitation in recommending Jeremy and the team when you need someone who can listen, produce and deliver a piece of mission critical software to a standard you can rely on.”

Read more about Company-X and Tractor Pull on the New Zealand news site Newshub.