Leveraging Your Ag-Data to Achieve Long-Term Advantage.

At Agworld we recently celebrated our 10 year anniversary of delivering ag-tech solutions to growers and their advisors. That milestone gave us the opportunity to catch up with many of our long standing customers to reflect on the last decade and the progress that has been made both within their businesses and ours. Now, as the 2020 season kicks off, I find myself looking ahead at what the next decade holds for the industry and the increasing role that data and technology will play.

What's interesting about looking back though, is many of our customers started with Agworld by getting the simple things done right and doing those things consistently over many years. They shared our visions for a platform that brings together all of the key players who contribute to growing a good crop at a good margin. They captured their agronomic and financial data from the field level up using structured, standardised data.

In his recent best selling book, Atomic Habits, author James Clear talks about the power of making tiny gains. Those who simply focus on getting 1% better everyday will experience compounding growth from those habits over the long run.

To me, many of our customers embody this practical, down-to-earth approach. By being diligent about capturing data over many seasons, they have created an incredibly valuable asset in their business. This, I believe, stands to give them an edge and advantage as the technology ecosystem matures rapidly in the coming years.

A recent example of this is Agworld's integration with PowerBI, the market leading reporting and business intelligence platform by Microsoft. It's been exciting to watch growers see years of data come to life at the click of a button. For many, this is a shift from simply 'reporting' on their data to being able to 'ask questions' of their data, to challenge their data and drill into the anomalies. From field-level costs and performance right up to how the macro agronomic and financial trends are changing in their business over time. All of this would not be possible had they not had the foresight to begin capturing their agronomic and financial data in a simple, standardised format.

At Agworld, we believe this is just the beginning of what the next decade holds for those who are prepared and committed to getting leverage from their data. As the industry moves and the technology matures, we will see the humble farm record emerge as a linchpin that contributes to almost all aspects of managing a profitable farm business.

Like any good habit, it's never too late to get started. For over a decade, our team has been partnering with growers and advisors to map out and support them in implementing their data and technology strategy. I encourage you to get in touch with us if you'd like to begin this conversation.