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About the Company:
Syngenta AG[1] is a global company that produces agrochemicals and seeds and is based in Basel, Switzerland. As a biotechnology company, it conducts genomic research. It was formed in 2000 by the merger of Novartis Agribusiness and Zeneca Agrochemicals. As of 2014, Syngenta is the worlds largest crop chemical producer. It is owned by ChemChina, a Chinese state-owned enterprise.
The Syngenta Digital Innovation Lab:
Syngenta has opened Digital Innovation Labs in the U.S., U.K., India, Singapore, Shanghai, and Basel.
Focused on digital development and innovation, strategy and out-of-the-box thinking, our Labs process large amounts of data to drive insights that can be used in everyday farm decisions[2].
The Syngenta Singapore lab exists to serve the 450,000,000 smallholder farmers across the Asia Pacific region[3]. The Lab mixes experienced digital and business leadership with fresh young innovative talent, harnessing the combined power of Syngenta colleagues, Academia, Startups, and the Singapore Government to deliver fast, agile and digital innovation for the good of Farmers and Growers as part of a globally connected network of Digital Innovation Labs and engineering capability.
The above figure represents the complete Sustainable Business report of 2018[4]. Syngenta is currently in more than 90+ countries. Syngentas goal is to connect farmers digitally[5]. Syngentas Net income was $1.4 billion[6] as of 2018. Over 27,732 employees worldwide are working on empowering farmers life.
Business Challenge:
How can we connect more farmers using digital channels to solve their problems and boost up Syngenta products sales?
Market Problem:
No direct connectivity with Farmers:
The screenshot above represents a list of Syngenta apps:[7]
Each app has its own use but there are very few people(around 3000 users per app) who are using these. One main reason is that there is no direct connectivity to farmers. Retailers are always acting as the middleman. Retailers have no interest in letting the farmer know about these applications and their use.
Manual efforts:
Lots of manual tasks like making farmers register in the app, training them, identifying the problems of the farmers and responding with solutions. These manual tasks cause an increase in costs and time.
Market data collection and data analytics: No method to collect the data and analyze and create a strategy for future products.
Business Challenge:
How might we equip Farmers with Latest technologies and better agriculture practices to solve farming problems
Proposed Solution:
When it comes to connecting to farmers, social media is our solution. We will be creating a Platform(Platform name : FarmerConnect) to connect through social media channels. The platform will be used as follows:
1)Marketing/Business people will post the articles which will be published on to the linked social media channels. These posts will contain links to redirect farmers to respective Syngenta apps. For example: If Syngenta wants more farmers to use the Syngenta Spray app, the marketing people will post an Article related to right spraying time, through this platform. The article which is published in social media will have a link to redirect farmers to the Syngenta Spray App. Because of social media influence, more and more farmers will be using Syngenta apps.
2)Marketing/Business people will create awareness campaigns to identify the problems of farmers and create ads with the respective links of Syngentas crop protection products. This will increase sales of Syngenta products. For example: If there is any Moth which is creating great loss to farmers, awareness campaigns will be created in the respective regions and ads will be published through this portal which will have the link to Retailer Connect(which gives information about nearest retailers available to buy products) or link to order products.Currently there are around 20 Syngenta apps[7] which can be integrated with this platform and this platform can be a place for developers to build new apps.
3) Marketing people/Business people can view/answer the comments/messages through this platform which are sent by farmers on social media channels and can respond with solutions. For example: If a farmer wants to know the issue of his less farm yield, he will be redirected with a link to farming workshop for better farming guidance. This will help in the identification of problems from farmers and solutions can be provided in lesser time. This will make more farmers register for Farming workshops which will in turn increase products and seeds sales as these farmers will be provided with proper guidance.
Impact of the Solution:
This platform will help Syngenta to identify problems in farms, to provide the products at the right time and this will improve the overall sales.
1) Increase in number of users for Syngenta Apps.
2) Single Platform for business/Marketing users to publish content.
3) Monitor Multiple Social Media Channels in One Place.
4) Easily View Analytics Data across all platforms.
5) Less Manual Efforts which results in reduction in the cost of manpower(Employment Cost).
6) Effective collaboration between business/marketing teams and Research teams.
7) Build Domain expertise in engineering teams.
8) More Farmers to connect through social media.
9) Boost of Syngenta Product sales.
10) Better identification of Farmer problems.
11) Knowledge sharing of Farming Techniques for better yield.
FarmerConnect Products Vision:
To provide a One-Stop Platform for connecting farmers all over the world using major Social media and Syngenta applications.
Currently, there is no faster way to identify farmer problems and post ads with relevant problems immediately. Our goal is to create a Platform that helps in sharing awareness campaigns to all the growers around the world in a fast and easy manner. With this FarmerConnect, marketing team gets more time to analyze the problems, the research team can find solutions to farmer problems. Overall the Farmers issues can be identified and Products can be provided. This Platform increases the overall sales of Syngenta.
Target Customers:
Our target customers are the farmers who are connected across major social media channels around the world.
The above figure represents the count of people in millions, who are connected via different social media channels[8].
This is the Facebook ads page which gives the Potential reach of an ad that is created on the Syngenta Page. It says that if we create an ad targeting farmers worldwide. The potential Target customers would be around 390,000,000 people which is 17% of total Facebook users[5].
From this, we can estimate that 17% of total social media channels that are 592,000,000 farmers will be the potential target group of the FarmerConnect.
Persona- Tejas:
Tejas
How can I protect my maize crop?
Behavior
Introvert.
Loves Maize farming.
Active on Social media.
Uses traditional methods of farming.
Uses mobile for communication.
Demographics
Farmer in Thailand
Age: 45 years
Have maize farm
Lives in Thailand
Needs and Goals
To adopt an effective method of farming.
To know about different moths that can affect crop.
To obtain better yields in maize crops.
To gather more information about crop protection products.
Customer Journey Map of persona:
Below diagram represents Tejass journey map including problems he faces and also ideas of improvement
Corporate Strategy Mix:
Business Strategy:
Global Leader helping to improve global food security by enabling millions of farmers to make better use of available resources.
Market Strategy:
Penetrate to all social media channels in APAC to connect farmers, and expand to the rest of the World.
Product Strategy:
Innovative, easy to post/comment, easy to onboard new pages, and a one-stop solution for identifying problems of farmers, with Security, Data analytics capabilities and followers count.
Business Goals:
FarmerConnect aims to achieve the following business goals –
To help Syngenta connect growers all over the world through social media channels.
To increase sales of Syngenta products.
To identify the problems of growers and research on creating new products and solutions to address problems.
To provide data analytics to Syngenta to make better business decisions and help analyze customer trends and satisfaction, which can lead to new and better products and services.
Unique Selling Points:
FarmerConnect has the following unique selling points:
First-ever one-stop platform to connect multiple social media channels.
Auto message and bulk notification/Email features can be easily configured.
Automatic Translation and post of campaigns to all Syngentas social media channel pages.
Increase in sales because of awareness campaigns.
Data analytics in a quick and easy way from all the applications, Social media channels.
KPIs of FarmerConnect:
Percentage decrease in time-to-publish content on social media.
Reduction in cost to create pages in social media channels.
Reduction in cost (in employee hours) maintaining pages and apps.
Increased number of newly published content items per week/month.
Increased Farmer Followers count and interactions per week.
Increased sales of Syngenta products because of ads,social media pages.
Increase Research and Development regarding solutions to crop problems per quarter.
Platform Idea Canvas:
The following represents the platform idea canvas of Farmerconnect where in consumers are farmers, Addressable market will be the people who do farming, Partners will be companies like MUFG who wants to finance farmers,Producers will be syngenta and Key activities will be to develop platform.Using the canvas we can map out FarmerConnect Idea in a better understandable way.
Product Roadmap:
External Product RoadMap:
FarmerConnect will be developed in three release cycles over a nine-month period starting Dec 2019. Each release will be after three months and will add key capabilities to the Platform. All social media channels in different countries will be integrated with this platform.
The initial release will launch the MVP (minimum viable product) and will be available in Thailand with the Platform handling all Thailand Apps, social media channels like LINE, Facebook, Youtube and also will be able to post as well as respond to messages from growers.
Release 2
Based on the feedback of the Product from Thailand, we will be integrating all social media channels in the APAC region. We will be integrating all existing Syngentas applications on to the social media channels. We will be integrating analytics tool to analyze the farmers data.
Release 3:
FarmerConnect will seamlessly be adding new social media channel pages and in this release, we will be creating bulk messaging updates. We will be integrating all Syngentas social media channels pages which are across the world. We will be creating websites instead of syngenta apps so that it will be integrated with facebook.
Internal Product Roadmap:
FarmerConnects internal product roadmap details the development of the platform and achieve the Products vision. The internal roadmap is divided into phases which detail the deliverables from various internal teams and align FarmerConnects development with its external product roadmap.
We will be using tools like Slack & Trello; our aim is to deliver collaborative, fast digital experimentation that can be constantly iterated through user feedback. Working together in Sprint teams in partnership with customers and colleagues, we will be able to very quickly move from Design to Creation within days, experimenting all the time.
Product Launch
As this is an internal Platform, It will be posted on the official communication channel of the employees. Knowledge Transfer sessions will be conducted to understand the Platform and use it in a better way.
Prototype:
The above figure represents the prototype platform of Farmer connect where there is post text box where people can create articles and post directly on different channels. Data analytics to view the data. Posts and users count for analytics.
Service Blueprint:
The above service blueprint represents the various interactions among farmers, retailers and Syngenta employees. First the farmer visits websites like facebook, where he can view the post created by business/Marketing people, which will redirect the farmer to syngenta website/apps. He can chat on the channel and marketing people will identify the issues. Farmers will be given location of store in case he wants to buy products. He can order for products through retailers and pay by cash.
Potential Risks:
The following are the potential Risks of the platform:
Knowledge Gaps:
KPI : Increased number of new published content items per week/month.
Marketing/Business people should learn how to post ads , create campaigns and also add Syngenta apps in their posts. If they are not able to learn about the platform then Knowledge gaps will be the potential risk.
Increasing Platform Operational Costs and Platform Downtime:
KPI: Reduction in cost (in employee hours) maintaining pages and apps.
Site outages(system failures (such as a crash) or communications failures) and issues will increase the downtime issue and thereby increasing the maintenance costs. It will affect the overall experience of the users.
Security Vulnerabilities:
There is potential risk of hacking as this platform will be connecting to social media channels.
Growth :
Post completion of launch (Aug 2020). We will be working on following:
We will be working on integrating the chatbot system which will respond to farmers problems and queries.
Problem identification by automatic pattern recognition from the messages of farmers.
Exit Strategy:
We will be exiting this platform:
If number of farmers connected through this platform has not increased.
If FarmerConnect is not able to seamlessly post information or create pages on to different channels due to technical issues.
Communicate and off-board Business/Marketing users:
We will be posting the information to all the employees on the internal communication channel and will ask Business/Marketing users to follow the legacy system of connecting farmers.
If required, Syngenta will identify the pitfalls within FarmerConnect and come up with the new platform as a replacement.
