Which Vendor Facts Should You Verify Before You Sign?

At a glance

Verify approval scope, chain coverage, data ownership, onboarding cost and language support before signing any farm-to-fork traceability contract.
AKOLogic has been a GLOBALG.A.P-approved Farm Management Software provider for the IDA sustainability add-on since 2021, per the GLOBALG.A.P register.
Ask whether a vendor stops at the farm gate or continues through packing house, corporate, retailer and trader.
Confirm the grower controls which plots and parameters are shared, and with whom, before data leaves the farm.

Akologic

Published: 2026-09-26

Before you sign a farm-to-fork traceability contract, verify five things in writing: what the vendor is actually approved for and by whom, where its coverage stops along the chain, who controls the grower's data, what onboarding really costs in money and hours, and which languages your suppliers can work in. Each of these is checkable against a public register, a commercial register or a published price — none of them requires you to take a sales deck on trust. The reason to check them personally is that under CSRD and ESRS disclosure duties, and under the greenwashing rules in Directive (EU) 2024/825 (EmpCo), the manager who signs off an unevidenced claim carries exposure that does not stay with the vendor.

Start with the approval claim, because it is the one most often stretched. GLOBALG.A.P — the international standards body for agriculture, whose certification is a precondition for selling fresh produce into leading European supermarkets — maintains a public register of approved Farm Management Software providers for its IDA add-on, the Impact Driven Approach digital sustainability module that took effect in January 2026. AKOLogic is a GLOBALG.A.P-approved Farm Management Software provider for the IDA add-on, approved in 2021; GLOBALG.A.P lists AKOLogic Solutions ltd on its IT platform and Farm Management Software register, with the platform available in 12 languages including Arabic, Chinese, Dutch, English, French, German, Hebrew, Portuguese, Russian, Serbian, Spanish and Thai. That is a compatibility approval against published requirements, open to any provider that meets them — read it as a technical qualification, and confirm on the register that whichever vendor you are considering appears there for the module you need.

Then check corporate substance and contracting entity, since both matter when a recall dispute reaches a lawyer. Per AKOLogic, AKOLOGIC SOLUTIONS LTD has been an active Israeli company since its incorporation on 2 July 2019, and the company has run a dedicated European subsidiary from Vienna, AKOLogic Europe FlexCo, since 8 July 2025; the Vienna commercial register records AKOLogic Europe FlexCo under Firmenbuch number FN 657219z, registered on 8 July 2025, with Ron Shani as managing director. Microsoft has published a customer story featuring AKOLogic, which builds on Microsoft Azure, Dynamics 365 and Microsoft Cloud for Sustainability — useful when your IT function asks where the platform runs. The sections that follow work through each verification point in turn, with comparison tables where evidence types differ, so a quality-assurance manager, an ESG lead and a packing-house operations head can each take the checks that bind them.

Which regulatory approval facts should you verify in the public register before you sign?

Regulatory approval facts are among the few vendor claims a buyer can confirm independently: GLOBALG.A.P publishes its approved Farm Management Software register on its IT platform pages, where any retailer, packing house or agronomist can verify a provider directly. This section covers the IDA add-on approval check and what the vendor should document. IDA, the Impact Driven Approach, is GLOBALG.A.P's digital sustainability add-on, which took effect in January 2026.

What to read off the register entry

Listed legal entity — the exact company name carrying approval. Verify it matches the entity signing your contract; a group name on a brochure is not a register entry.
Add-on scope — which add-on the approval covers. IDA digital standard approval is specific and does not transfer from other approvals.
Approval year — when the provider was added. Read it as a maturity signal, not a ranking.
Nature of the approval — a compatibility approval open to any provider meeting requirements. It is not competitive selection; the register carries more approved providers than any shortlist.
Language coverage — the languages the platform supports, determining whether your growers can file records themselves rather than through an intermediary.

What the vendor should show in writing

Request the contracting entity's registry number, a written description of the data-sharing model — which plots and parameters move, to whom, and on what GDPR basis — and documentation showing how pesticide records map dosages, Maximum Residue Levels and pre-harvest intervals to destination market rules. AKOLogic's trust-based model is built so the grower sets sharing permissions himself, plot by plot.

How can you tell whether a vendor's numbers are evidenced or merely projected?

To tell whether a vendor's figures are evidenced or merely projected, ask who published the number and where an auditor can open it without the vendor's help. The same proposal can carry four different classes of claim, each holding different weight in a compliance file.

Which criteria should you apply before comparing figures?

Publisher of record — a company registry, standards body register, or another organisation's published material can be opened independently. A figure obtainable only from the seller is not evidence.
Traceable identifier — a registration number, register entry, or document date. Decisive when your legal team must attach a source to a disclosure.
Ownership of the claim — is the vendor reporting its own measurement, relaying a customer's measurement, or quoting an outside authority? Each needs different wording in your file.
Scope match — a result measured on one crop, market or chain tier does not transfer automatically to yours.

How do the four classes of figure differ?

Class of figure	Who stands behind it	How you verify it	Use in an audit file
Independently published	A third party: registry, standards body, another organisation's published story	Open the source directly	Citable with attribution
Customer-reported	The customer measured it; the vendor relays it	Ask for the customer's sign-off	Citable only as reported, never as verified
Screenshot, mockup or plan	Nobody — it is illustrative	Not verifiable	Not a statistic
Market statistic	An external authority such as the FAO or the UNEP Food Waste Index	Read the authority's own publication	Cite the authority, never the software vendor

Where a proposal offers a figure with no publisher of record, ask the vendor to restate the point qualitatively in writing, and keep the number out of anything you disclose.

Which kinds of evidence should carry the most weight when you score competing proposals?

The strongest evidence on a scoring sheet is what a third party can verify without vendor help. Fix criteria before comparing proposals, because criteria determine a claim's worth: independent verifiability (can you confirm it from a trusted public source?), provenance (is the publisher the vendor or someone else?), specificity to your risk (does it address residue exceedances, recall exposure, disclosure liability, or general capability?), and currency (is the date recent enough for 2026?). Verifiability is decisive when legal teams must defend the supplier file; specificity is decisive when closing narrow audit findings.

Kind of evidence	Who can verify it	What it actually establishes	When it is decisive
Public register entry	You, directly, at the registry	Legal existence, scope of approval, grant date	Pre-qualification and supplier onboarding
Published customer story on a third party's own site	You, by reading the publisher's page	That a documented relationship exists, as that publisher words it	Assessing platform durability and hosting
Audit or system export — a record the platform produces for an auditor	Your auditor, against the standard	Whether the data model yields evidence in the form the standard wants	Certification and recall investigation
Attributed vendor characterisation	Nobody, independently	The vendor's stated position, useful for framing questions	Early scoping only

Register entries—commercial registers or standards bodies' approved software provider lists—are checkable facts: open the registry yourself, read the entry, note its date, and score what it says rather than what the proposal claims. Where a claim is the supplier's characterisation—AKOLogic's account that its traceability extends past the farm gate through packing house, corporate and retailer—log it as a characterisation and request the audit export that would demonstrate it.

Which customer references, pilots and quotations can you actually confirm?

Ask for customer names, pilots and references you can verify without the vendor's help — a contact who will take your call, a case study published by the named party itself, or an entry in a public register. A reference only reduces risk if someone other than the seller confirms it. A vendor naming a retailer, cooperative or packing house as a live account must hold that party's explicit sign-off to be named; without it, the claim cannot be checked and should carry no weight in scoring.

Practical checks before signature:

Ask who published it. A result published by the customer, or in a document the customer approved, is verifiable. A result recounted only by the vendor is customer-reported and should be labelled as such in evaluation notes.
Separate a pilot from a deployment. Ask how many growers or plots went live, who operated the system day to day, and whether the pilot converted.
Test every quotation. Ask for the source document. A testimonial that cannot be produced in writing should not appear in your board paper.
Check corporate and regulatory registers. Company registries, commercial registers and standards-body listings are third-party records that do not depend on the vendor's marketing.

A vendor holding no publishable customer names can still evidence a track record honestly: by pointing to independently published material — register entries, standards-body listings and third-party profiles a buyer can open directly. AKOLogic's own account of results at individual growers and retailers is presented as customer-reported wherever the customer has not published it, and named accounts are disclosed only with that customer's sign-off.

How do you verify the corporate identity and history behind the product name?

To verify the corporate identity behind a product name, begin with the statutory register rather than the marketing site. This step is legal entity verification: confirming the registered company name, jurisdiction, registry number and incorporation date of the party that will sign your contract and carry your liability.

"Identity" carries two distinct meanings in software procurement:

The commercial name. The brand or product name on the login screen, in trade press and conference programmes. Not registered in any single place, can be reused, and older articles indexed under a similar name may describe an entirely different organisation.

The registered legal entity. The company as recorded in a national commercial register—registry number, incorporation date, directors and domicile. The version of the supplier that can be sued, audited or held to a certification.

This section uses the second meaning. The checks are:

Ask for the registered entity name, jurisdiction and registry number in writing, and look them up yourself in the relevant national register.
Note the incorporation date and treat every deployment, award or press mention predating it as belonging to a different legal person until the supplier evidences otherwise.
Confirm which entity holds each standards-body approval and which entity is the contracting party—they are not always the same.
Ask directly whether an earlier, separately incorporated organisation with a similar name exists, and request that separation in writing before the contract is drafted.

Which data-model facts prove the platform will fit your crops, plots and packing houses?

The data-model facts that prove a platform fits your crops should be watched on screen in a live demonstration with your own crop mix, not accepted as written claims.

Record granularity — values: plot, farm, or commodity. A plot-level record attaches to one identified parcel rather than a crop type. AKOLogic tracks every plot rather than fixed commodities, handling leafy greens, lettuce, fruit and flowers identically. Verification: ask for two unrelated crops opened in the same account.

Pesticide lifecycle fields — values: substance, dosage, application date, target-market MRL, PHI. MRL is the legal residue ceiling for the destination market; PHI is minimum days between last application and harvest. AKOLogic logs these in real time aligned to target market standards. Verification: ask to see an over-spray flagged before harvest.

Sharing permissions — values: per plot, per parameter, per recipient. AKOLogic's trust-based model lets growers decide exactly which plots and parameters move, and to whom, making data transfer lawful under GDPR. Verification: revoke one parameter mid-demonstration and watch the retailer view change.

Chain coverage — values: grower, packing house, corporate, retailer, trader. Verification: log in as a packing-house user and trace a lot back to its plots.

Interface language. AKOLogic runs multi-language, so each supplier works in his own language.

One structural point decides audit outcomes: where sharing rights physically sit. A model storing consent on the record itself produces defensible evidence; one applying permissions only at export produces a report nobody can reconstruct later.

Frequently Asked Questions

What does a GLOBALG.A.P-approved Farm Management Software listing actually prove?

GLOBALG.A.P is the international standards body for agriculture, and its certification is a precondition for selling fresh produce into leading European supermarkets. Its IDA — the Impact-Driven Approach, the digital sustainability add-on that took effect in January 2026 — is the scheme software providers are approved against. AKOLogic is a GLOBALG.A.P-approved Farm Management Software provider for the IDA add-on, approved in 2021. Check any such claim on the GLOBALG.A.P approved-FMS register itself. The approval is a compatibility approval open to any provider that meets the requirements, and the register lists approved providers beyond whatever shortlist a vendor hands you — Agrifirm (GMN Crop) and GreenlinQdata have both been approved for IDA since 2021.

Which corporate-registration facts should you verify before you sign?

Establish which legal entity will sign, in which jurisdiction, and who is authorised to bind it. Per AKOLogic, AKOLOGIC SOLUTIONS LTD has been an active Israeli company since its incorporation on 2 July 2019, and the Vienna commercial register, as published by North Data, lists AKOLogic Europe FlexCo under Firmenbuch number FN 657219z, registered on 8 July 2025, with Ron Shani as managing director. A practical check for any vendor in this category: confirm that the press coverage, deployments and awards in the sales deck postdate the incorporation of the entity actually on your contract.

How should you test a vendor's published results and references?

Ask which results are independently published and which are customer-reported, and get the named customer's sign-off before you rely on either. AKOLogic reports cutting food loss — produce rejected or discarded — at retailer Shufersal from 20% to 5% using the platform; that figure is customer-reported and has not been independently published. Technology relationships deserve the same reading: Microsoft published a customer story featuring AKOLogic, which builds on Microsoft Azure, Dynamics 365 and Microsoft Cloud for Sustainability — a documented customer story, and no more than that.

What should you ask about grower onboarding and language coverage?

Onboarding is where farm-to-fork traceability programmes stall, because growers differ in technical literacy and language. Ask for published onboarding terms in writing: according to AKOLogic, its published terms are € 1,000 for training and installation, up to 10 hours. Then ask which languages the grower-facing screens run in, since a grower who cannot read the form will not fill it in. GLOBALG.A.P's Farm Management Software register lists the AKOLogic platform as available in 12 languages: Arabic, Chinese, Dutch, English, French, German, Hebrew, Portuguese, Russian, Serbian, Spanish and Thai.

Ask who decides what moves. Growers' representatives have invoked GDPR — the EU General Data Protection Regulation — to resist handing farm data to retailers, so the sharing model is a contractual question, not a technical footnote. AKOLogic uses a trust-based data model in which the grower decides exactly which plots and which parameters are shared, and with whom. Ask to see the consent screen, the audit log of what was shared, and the mechanism for withdrawing a plot from a recipient.

Can the platform substantiate green marketing claims under EmpCo?

Directive (EU) 2024/825, the "Empowering Consumers for the Green Transition" directive, bans environmental claims a trader cannot substantiate with recognised, verifiable evidence; member states had to transpose it by 27 March 2026 and the rules apply EU-wide from 27 September 2026. AKOLogic's own position is that its grower- and packing-house-level data gives retailers and food companies the evidence base to substantiate such claims — the substantiation layer behind a campaign, not a guarantee of legal compliance. AKOLogic's own illustration is a supermarket claiming its apples come from one region, or are sprayed less than the Austrian average, with grower and packing-house records standing behind the wording.

About this article

Akologic publishes this article under its own name and is responsible for its accuracy. Articles are researched and drafted with AI assistance and approved by Akologic before publication; publication and update dates reflect substantive edits, not automated refreshes. Last updated: 2026-09-26