Nearly two years ago, the Lawson family became involved with FarmIQ as a regional representative farm.
FarmIQ's vision is to create a demand-driven integrated value chain for red meat that delivers sustainable benefits to all participants.
Speaking at their recent third field day, Mr Lawson said they had reached a point in the programme where they had gained a lot of information and were re-evaluating their goals.
Moana is a 2300ha property, comprising steep hill country to rolling flats and running 10,000 stock units, near Karitane. It has been farmed by the Lawson family for 60 years.
A steering team was set up in 2011 and its first job was to set some goals and objectives for the five-year programme.
A lot of short-term goals focused on integration and uptake of innovation and EID (electronic identification) on the farm, and also production goals, with a particular focus on lamb growth rates.
While they were ''not revolutionising anything yet'', performance measurement had enabled them to see the opportunities, where they were going wrong and where they could improve, Mr Lawson said.
Goals included getting 1500 lambs away by Christmas and consistent reproductive efficiency, as well as a financial target, while a medium-term aspirational goal was to grow the business to a 12,000 stock unit platform.
And, while they had come a long way, they were still only using a small percentage of what the technology could deliver.
They were not used to doing field trials within a commercial operation, but they had got better at that, and planning and preparation was something they had improved on, he said.
There had been ''payback in different ways'', the most obvious one being increased stock performance.
One of the ''big stories'' in their breeding flock had been their two-tooths. Improvements had come down to ''just doing the basics better''. They saw that their two-tooths were not scanning as high as they should have been and took the opportunity to increase performance, through improved weights.
In 2011, the hill 2-tooths scanned 150% and the paddock 2-tooths were 136%, while last year, the hill ones were 165% and paddock 154%.
Giving a lamb review, Mr Lawson said contracts had softened the price drop. They were on track to produce a similar annual tonnage of lamb, about 110 tonnes.
Looking to the future, a whole-farm soil test was being conducted, which would give them some powerful information on the fertiliser side of the business. They had just completed their Pigeon Bush QEII convenant, fencing 190ha.
''Project 10,000'' was probably going to be their lamb goal. Net lambs on the ground were about 7500 and they were trying to increase that to 10,000 in five years.
That would mean another 1000 ewes, which fitted with their 12,000 stock unit end goal. While they were ''pretty lofty'' goals, it was ''something to put out there and see if we can achieve'', Mr Lawson said.
FarmIQ Otago and Southland Otago and Southland business manager Stuart Bayliss said he was excited about where the programme could be taken.
There was a ''really good'' base set of information and measurements now, they could look to see the opportunities and take the business forward and hopefully take a lot of the learning out to the wider industry, he said.