Avoid Technology Sinkholes: Questions Ag Retailers Should Ask
Tyler Bottoms, Commercial Director at AgVision Software, says if he could solve one problem with a magic wand, it would be to reduce the ag retail industry’s technical debt. As he explains in The Scoop podcast, there are questions every ag retailer can ask themselves as they seek out new technologies. And with ongoing labor shortages and Generation Z replacing retiring Baby Boomers, it’s important to be taking on more efficient ways of doing business.
AgVision is an ERP, which Bottoms highlights provides a module-based feature set to help ag retailers digitize their business.
“We can do your grain, your inventory, your finances, payroll, patronage, and more” he says. “This company has been around for 45 years, so we are a stable company with the ability to continue to expand.”
When it comes to what software should help businesses achieve, Bottoms underscores the operational efficiencies.
“We’re hearing quite a bit when we have these companies that are coming on board is everybody's sort of seen a labor shortage and a labor crunch,” he says.
Technology can help elevate the type of work human labor does and it can reposition the human labor to do the tasks only humans can do, while leaning on technology to complete some of the work.
“The next generation coming up, everybody's grown up with their cell phone and their tablet and everything else. They want to have that operational piece to be more efficient, more technology driven and so forth from there,” he says.
The timing to adopt new processes and new technology is emphasized by the generation coming into the workforce as well as the opportunity cost lurking in many legacy systems and ways of doing business. This is referred to as ‘technical debt’ and it’s something Bottoms sees as a key issue for agriculture.
“Technical debt, the ability to take something that has been a product that's been around for 30 something years and quickly and easily move it to a new system, is a challenge,” he says. “We see it time and time again and we're guilty of it too. A product that has been a strong stable product for 30 years but that's the problem. It's also now 30 years old. So it’s important to move that to the newest and latest product or technology.”
To make sure technology investments are on target and continue to move a business forward, Bottoms shares it’s key to identify your pain points.
“If you have a scale ticket that blows off your desk every day, maybe you need a system that keeps that scale ticket electronically stored and you can send it out in a text, email or an app,” he shares.
Bottoms has been with AgVision for the past year, but he has been in the data and technology space since 2007. He says his favorite part of his job and working in agriculture is the people.
And working with people to improve their business with technology has been rewarding.
“The ag industry in general is still a little iffy when it comes to technology and making changes. So being able to go through the process to show somebody that has done it a certain way for 20 something years that there's something that might be a little bit better, and them going ‘oh wow, that's amazing.’ Even if it's just something really simple. It's a really rewarding aspect of it is just sort of seeing that we can make something a little bit easier for them when all is said and done,” he says.
