Digital transformation of the agri-value chain
Challenge
Devising a new customer experience strategy to retain competitive advantage and boost customer retention rates of the world’s biggest tractor manufacturer and a manufacturing giant with interests across industries.
Key discoveries
Turian Labs mapped and drew insights from the current landscape of the Indian agricultural value-chain, mapped digital transformation opportunities in the farmer’s ecosystem for a digitally enabled business, built a service model and devised measures that actively encouraged the uptake of smart farming technologies.
Nearly half of India’s population works in agriculture, but contributes less than a fifth of India’s GDP. In other words, it has very poor operational efficiency. Digital technologies and data-driven innovations have now permeated various sectors including farming, to achieve higher yields and better ROI. Owing to better internet connectivity across the country and analytical capabilities offered by many companies, it is now possible to connect different parts of the farmer’s process seamlessly; while taking into account weather data, accessing field-specific information from a central, cloud-based farm management software, including the ability to rent equipment or even order spare parts.
A large Indian conglomerate approached Turian Labs to map the current landscape of Indian agricultural value-chain, in order to develop business and service directions for a scalable digital advisory and eCommerce platform aligned to the poorly met needs and preferences of a traditional Indian farmer. The ask was to establish a differential advantage for the client within the industry, while still empathizing with the real users of the system – farmers cultivating a stock of any kind anywhere in the country.
The interdisciplinary team at Turian Labs observed societal, cultural and technological nuances while interacting with stakeholders, and categorized farmers into different personas. One of our key lines of inquiry was to understand whether potentially expensive cutting edge technologies will have any traction with farmers. Turian Labs also scoped farmer dependency on government subsidies and identified barriers to entry for interventions by a private entity.
Our proprietary Kedging model, combined with a granular understanding of the ‘customer journey’ of a farmer, helped us identify engagement paths in sync with emerging digital trends. This helped cast the end-users’ voice into insights and develop a business-service model that appealed to all the stakeholders in the value chain.
With the application of qualitative tools generated by our research and strategy teams, we clearly defined end-user expectations, target segments and effective bundling of services for the farmer personas. Our team effectively created a proof-of-concept, and with several end-user validation sprints through medium-fidelity prototypes, ensured early buy-in for the idea.
Client impact
Through our work, the client were able to determine where to invest (and not invest) in the customer’s journey, and how to go about efficiently operationalizing the recommended plan for the greatest return to the company across a broad range of performance goals, including retention, returns and costs.
“Turian Labs went out of their way to identify & meet not only farmers but interesting influencers which helped us shape a good understanding of not only the farmers’ unmet needs but also gaps in the value chain outside of the farmers’ direct influence. Their usage of assets (Design Methods and Tools) like cue cards, wireframes, etc. helped the farmers open up easily which was a critical aspect of the insighting journey. Their ability to synthesize after every stage and document the findings in beautiful, simple & visual reports helped us to propagate the project progress, within the organization, very well.”