Case Studies

Ohio AgLink Application Management

About Ohio AgLink

The State Treasurer of Ohio works hard to fulfill many different financial programs for the citizens in Ohio. As each new program is created and teams are hired to manage them, the complexity grows. One such program was the AgLink program which built a sizable staff over the course of 30 years. Through the AgLink program, the State Treasurer’s Office manages a wide array of documentation and guides the exchange of information on behalf of thousands of farmers and bankers. The program also manages the complex algorithm used to determine the priority of who receives the approximately $100 million in bank loan funding each year.

The Challenge: Manual, Messy, and Maxed Out

The Ohio State Treasurer’s AgLink program provides over $100 million in low-interest loans to farmers each year. But for decades, the process behind that funding was completely manual and painfully complex.

Farmers and bankers juggled dense, multi-step forms, collecting everything from funding history to military service to crop types
Applications were submitted through mail or email, then manually entered into spreadsheets by state employees
Staff had to request follow-ups, verify submissions, and apply a nuanced scoring algorithm to rank applicants
The result? A high-touch, labor-intensive workflow that took weeks to process and strained state resources

The program had scaled over 30 years, but the system behind it hadn’t. It was time for a digital transformation.

The Solution: Centralized, Role-Based Automation with Real-Time Communication

Switchbox delivered a custom web-based platform that streamlined every step of the process without sacrificing compliance or human oversight.

Key upgrades included:

A single secure web portal for farmers, bankers, and state staff to submit, review, and manage applications
Online forms and scan-to-upload tools, consolidating all communication and documents in one place
Role-specific dashboards showing each user exactly what needed to be completed and when
Automated workflows and real-time emails guiding users through each stage, from submission to approval
A built-in scoring engine that ranked applications in seconds, replacing a manual process that once took two weeks

Every piece of the experience was designed to reduce human error, eliminate back-and-forth, and save significant staff time.

The Outcome: Zero Phone Calls, Instant Rankings, and $100M Managed with Ease

The transformation was immediate and measurable:

Inbound and outbound calls dropped to near zero, thanks to fully digital, automated communication
Bankers gained a centralized hub to manage all clients in one place
Repeat submissions skyrocketed. Users could now easily copy over prior year data
4 full-time positions reallocated freeing staff to focus on other high-impact projects
Loan application ranking time shrank from 2 weeks to just 4 seconds

Key Metrics at a Glance