Dave Swain advocates ag retailers align their investment in technology with their objectives. He says it’s not a matter of whether or not retailers are buying products and services but rather how they are embedding those capabilities in their everyday workflows.
In tighter ag economic conditions, many businesses may be doing audits or looking for where to cut costs, and Swain says technology should not be automatically at the top of the chopping block. However, he does see opportunities to refine expenses in this category to help ensure your business is being optimized.
“Retailers know they are not making the best use of the tech they have,” he says. Swain draws on his career in ag equipment, technology and on the retail side to consult in the industry via his business, Vision Technology Management.
He says there are four types of expectations:
- Known
- Unknown
- Realistic
- Unrealistic
“Most customers have unknown, unrealistic expectations of technology,” Swain explains. “The goal is to move to known, realistic expectations.”
He says that is where there’s a sweet spot of making necessary investments to reach objectives tied to your business.
So where are the most common missteps made? From his experience, Swain shares the following:
1. Subscriptions they don’t know they have.
“A group may have tried five different scouting apps in six years with evergreen renewals, and they never canceled,” he says. “Often people forgot they were paying for it. And that’s also to say maybe there’s more than one good scouting app. It’s not about only picking one, but rather making sure you are only paying for things you use.”
2. Duplicates in products and services.
“This became really common with steering systems, for example, as those were being adopted more readily and outfitted from the factory,” he says.
3. Unclear on use and functions.
“Sometimes a team isn’t using a technology because they don’t have the training on it, and it’s time to contact the vendor,” Swain says.
4. Someone has to be the champion.
“I’ve seen products come and go because people who used the product never fully integrated it into their business,” Swain says. “How do you know if a technology is a good fit or not if you don’t have someone own its adoption to fully vet it?”
As you look at a product or service that could become part of your team’s technology use, here are four questions Swain says help avoid issues and not getting the biggest bang for your buck.
- What is your objective?
- What’s the core business this serves?
- What are the expectations?
- Where do you want to go with the scale of its use?
