Synopsis: In the Forrester commissioned economic impact study, you’ll gain insights backed by customer interviews into the cost savings and business benefits you can reap by deploying Cropin Cloud Platform. This blog post explores the key findings of the Forrester TEI study and leads you to quantify the return on investment of deploying Cropin Cloud.
Introduction
The Cropin Cloud Platform can save money and make your agri-business more profitable. These are pretty big deals, of course. But how do we know that? Well, we don't know it only because we think our platform makes sense. We know this because Forrester, an independent research firm, interviewed Cropin Cloud customers and then performed a rigorous analysis. This post underscores the key findings from that analysis and offers you a pathway to an ROI conversation with your own stakeholders.
The global food security depends on a safe and reliable agriculture. Nowadays, everybody is talking about the total economic impact (TEI) and return on investment (ROI) of digital transformation in the agricultural sector. But why? If you take a closer look, you realize that the food processing industry's net profit margin is a meager 12%, while the seed, fertilizers, and pesticides business has even less to show, often hovering around single-digit percentages. This sector is running on exceptionally tight margins. And what is the total economic impact (TEI) and return on investment (ROI) of improved precision agriculture, the use of big data, or even simple investments like a better plow? Nobody seems to know. The agriculture sector can improve its profits by investing in the best tools and technologies available and making sense of data.
However, unclear economic advantages impede the adoption of innovative solutions that could significantly enhance productivity, efficiency, and sustainability. When entertaining any significant financial outlay, be it for a new operation or a new software platform or even participating in an event, businesses must scope out the value and assess and validate the tangible and measurable benefit it will bring.
This is where Cropin Cloud comes in. As the world's first industry cloud for food and agriculture, we enable stakeholders across the entire food value chain to access near real-time data and insights. Moreover, we work with over a hundred global leaders in food production, food retail, finance, and other sectors to solve pressing industry problems across 103 countries, including the apparently insoluble challenges of feeding an ever-hungrier world and mitigating climate change.
With intelligence built around more than 1 billion acres of the world’s cultivable land, we deliver a scalable agri-stack developed as a powerful triad of capabilities comprising - Cropin Apps, Cropin Data Hub, and Cropin Intelligence. By leveraging a suite of advanced tools, including precision agriculture features, disease early warning systems, and hyperlocal weather forecasts, Cropin Cloud enables data-driven decision-making to
- Increase yields
- Optimize input resource usage
- Reduce costs
- Improve sustainability
- Build a more resilient food system
There is more now.
A Forrester TEI Study Reveals the True Value of Digital Transformation in Agriculture Using Cropin Platform
If you are struggling to evaluate the benefits of your digital transformation journey, specifically to understand the projected ROI, even before getting started, we have a solution.
Cropin commissioned Forrester Consulting to conduct The Total Economic Impact™ (TEI) study and assess the potential return on investment (ROI) enterprises could realize by deploying the Cropin platform to digitize farm management. In the recently released Forrester TEI Tool, you’ll gain insights into the cost savings and business value enterprises can realize with Cropin Technology Solutions.
Quantifying the Impact: How Forrester Assessed RoI of Digital Transformation with Cropin
Forrester TEI report comprehensively analyzes the total economic impact of deploying the Cropin Cloud platform. Forrester interviewed seed production and food processing organizations that deployed Cropin Technology Solutions for this analysis. For the study, Forrester aggregated the experiences of interviewees and consolidated the results to create a single composite organization with a revenue of $40 billion per year.
Interviewed organizations were in the early stages of digitization and encountered inadequacies in data practices, resulting in limited predictive insights on weather and pest outbreaks.
Unlocking Value: A Forrester TEI Study Explores the Economic Impact of Cropin Cloud
Forrester, being a renowned research firm, employed four fundamental elements of TEI in modeling the investment impact, namely:
- Benefits
- Costs
- Flexibility
- Risks
01 Benefits
Forrester classified the benefits of digitizing with Cropin solution under quantified and unquantified heads as follows:
Quantified benefits:
- Improved data collection efficiency in crop stage evaluations by 90%
- Reduced profit losses due to improved supply and demand forecasting
- Incremental profits of up to $241,000 with improved visibility on yield quality
Unquantified benefits
- Better adherence to compliance
- Upholding of labor and human rights
- Sustainable and responsible sourcing
- Improvement of farmers’ livelihood
02 Costs
Composite organizations recorded one-time implementation and training costs, as well as annual costs for licensing, servicing, and maintenance. The financial analysis showed benefits of $3.9 million over three years on costs of $1.5 million. This translated into:
03 Flexibility
Flexibility is unique to each customer. Cropin’s data integration capability enables organizations to gain a comprehensive understanding of their farming operations by integrating a variety of data on the platform. There are multiple scenarios in which a customer might implement Cropin Solutions and later realize additional uses and business opportunities. Cropin offers flexibility in choosing the solution based on where the users are in their digital transformation journey. It allows the benefit of some future additional investment building on top of the initial investment made. With Cropin Cloud, agri-food and allied businesses can better manage the complexity of multiple-point technology solutions.
04 Risks
Forrester accentuates the value of this assessment by considering the risks. The benefits of time and cost savings from data collection will vary depending on the usage of the platform and the number of agronomists and farm managers employed. Similarly, improved supply and demand forecasting can vary with total annual revenue, macroeconomic shifts, and natural disasters. Meanwhile, improved visibility on yield quality can vary depending on the organization's size, industry, market, and competitive landscape. Forrester adjusts for such risks while calculating the ROI.
In conclusion, the findings from this report validate the effectiveness of Cropin solutions. It simplifies complex business parameters into easily understandable inputs and outputs, uncovering significant benefits like an ROI of 161%. The comprehensive financial insights showcase the tangible success and financial advantages of adopting tech-driven interventions. Customers enjoy a single dashboard view of their entire operations, and the icing on the cake is near real-time monitoring. This insightful visibility enabled them to improve farmer relationships, proactively mitigate loss from risks like pests & disease, improve yield quality & quantity, source responsibly by easing audits, conduct comprehensive post-harvest analysis, and more.
Use this interactive tool based upon the Forrester Consulting study now and discover the impact of Cropin Technology Solutions and the value it can bring to your organization. Click here for a first-hand experience.
