New dawn for farm tech: sowing the Internet of Things into agriculture

irishtimes.com

Ireland’s biggest export is food and some of its largest companies are food-related, offering huge opportunities

Did you hear the one about the connected cow? It might seem like a joke, but thanks to advancements in big data, technology and the Internet of Things, a new era of farming is emerging.

Cows are being connected to the internet to help track the animal’s health and improve their milk yield. This is done by placing special electronic collars on the cattle. The collars contain a wireless sensor that transmits data about the animal’s health and the amount of milk being produced back to a central computer or device.

That’s not the only way cows are being incorporated into the Internet of Things era of people, animals and objects all connected to the web. Wireless sensors attached to cows’ tails can alert a farmer when a cow is going into labour, while radio-positioning tags can monitor a herd’s behaviour. If an animal starts behaving differently, the farmer can easily locate it to make sure it is not lame or sick.

“The farming sector is being transformed by technology,” Moocall chief executive Emmet Savage says, adding: “The labour-intensity of tasks like milking is significantly reduced by technology such as robotic milking parlours.”Farming is in the middle of a digital revolution. Along with connected cows, there are  moisture in soil.

Moocall is among the Irish companies leading the way in farming and agri-tech innovations. The company’s calving sensor warns farmers when a cow is one hour from birthing to ensure cow and calf are cared for in the event of a difficult birth.

“Moocall came about four years ago when farmer Niall Austin lost a cow and calf due to a difficult birth and the fact he wasn’t with the animal when it was born,” according to Savage.

He says the device works by monitoring the movement of a cow’s tail in order to predict when labour is imminent, which is a world first. Farmers no longer need to monitor CCTV or visit calving sheds, as the Irish-designed device will send a text message when the cow is going into labour.

The company is exporting the smart calving device, which can pick up event the weakest of network signals, to the UK, Europe, New Zealand, Canada, the US and Australia. “The device has a signal even in low reception areas. This was important to us because of the remoteness of some farms,” Savage says.

With labour costs rising and technology costs declining, machinery is also embracing the Internet of Things. The name John Deere might be associated with tractors, but the company has also developed a huge fleet of interconnected machines ranging from balers to planters and harvesters.

Guided by sensors, geolocation data and cloud-based software, these machines can drive themselves, inject fertiliser at precise depths, automatically space seeds based on soil fertility and measure harvest data in real time.

Similarly, Japanese manufacturer Yamaha is better known for its motor cycles and marine products, but it is also making unmanned aerial vehicles or drones for crop-spraying. The company says 2,500 of these vehicles are currently being used to spray more than 2.5 million acres of Japanese rice farms, and it recently got regulatory approval to begin supplying the drones to farmers in the US.

While crop-spraying drones aren’t new, Carlow farmers Paul and Declan Brennan have taken a rather novel approach to unmanned aerial vehicles. The two brothers decided to deploy Shep – the world’s first sheepdog drone – after Declan’s sheepdog suffered an injury which left him lame.

The drone can move Declan’s herd of 150 sheep quickly and easily from one field to another, and costs significantly less than a sheepdog.

Agriculture is Ireland’s biggest indigenous sector, accounting for approximately 10 per cent of exports and 7.7 per cent of employment. This, combined with the rise of technology companies and start-ups in Ireland, is contributing to Ireland’s success in agri-tech.

One Irish company that has had a global impact when it comes to farm technology is Keenan Systems. The company develops feeding machines, which are used by thousands of farmers from Canada to China, to give their livestock the optimal mix of food. The machines are connected to the cloud allowing for a real-time feed of information to the Keenan control centre in Co Kilkenny, where it is analysed.

John McCurdy, innovation director with Keenan Systems, says the system allows the company to work proactively with farmers to address anomalies before they become a major issue.

For example, a farmer in New Zealand might have a greater moisture content in the mix than one in Wales and this is catered for by the system.

“We found that farms were being flooded with data, but only 5 per cent to 10 per cent of our customers were actually making use of that data. Moving our technology on to the cloud has given us the ability to work with more people and make it simpler for them.”

He says all the data from 3,000 farms around the world comes back to the Kilkenny centre, where it is analysed by software.

“The software identifies issues such as changes in the composition of the food or milk. We can then remotely make changes to the machine and one of our nutritional advisers can also guide the farmer through the issue”.

From digital collars on animals to robotic milking parlours, McCurdy believes the future of farm technology will be a virtual network of data sources.

“The network will bring them all together, adding value not just to the farmer but to the supply chain.”

As well as virtual networks of farm machinery and devices all communicating with each other, the future will also be also be about functional foods, according to Nuritas founder Nora Khaldi.

She says innovation in the food and farming sectors comes at a pivotal time.

According to the Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations (FAO), the world’s population is expected to grow by two billion to 9.1 billion people by 2050. If this happens, the organisation says, food production will need to rise by 70 per cent, and food production in the developing world will need to double.

“People won’t just buy foods for taste and energy. The food will help them with diabetes, cognition, mood, gut etc,” she says. “If someone has an exam, they can eat a cereal bar that will help with cognition. Nuritas is a Dublin-based start-up which data mines food to discover peptides – amino acids – that contain beneficial health properties.

“The health system is not working,” Khaldi adds. “There is an urgency to find solutions for these problems. The best molecule in foods can tackle these problems. We look at molecules in food and identify life-changing ones with therapeutic qualities.”

This week, Khaldi will address the Irish Technology Leadership Group (ITLG) Silicon Valley Global Technology Summit in Dublin on the subject of agtech and reinventing the farm.

ITLG founder John Hartnett says the agtech revolution is being driven not only by increased labour costs, but water shortages and less land. “The system is already constrained as arable land has reduced by 50 per cent since 1960 due to population growth.”

He says the middle-class today represents 1.2 billion people worldwide, with that figure set to increase to 4.5 billion by 2050. “That demographic is aware and savvy when it comes to the connection between fresh food and health. This major demand on one hand, and supply and labour constraints on the other had are creating the perfect storm for tech and innovation to play a role in food and farming.

“Once upon a time it was all about social media, now big firms are looking at agri-tech. One of the world’s leading investment firms – Kleiner Perkins – the company which backed Google and most other major firms in Silicon Valley, has said farming is the future. Google Ventures has invested $15 billion in Farmers Business Network.”

He says Ireland is sitting on the cusp of a huge opportunity in agri-tech. Ireland’s biggest export is food and some of its largest companies, such as Kerry and Glanbia, are food-related. It has also become the Silicon Valley of Europe. It’s just a matter of combining the two.

Is app-free mobile loyalty the way of the future?

mobilecommercedaily.com

Mobile loyalty applications can provide a rich user experience, but their proliferation threatens to make them as unappealing to consumers as the physical cards they seek to replace, causing some marketers to explore alternatives such as wallet-based programs, which have a more limited set of benefits.

The ability to save a digital loyalty card to a mobile wallet is not new, but the strategy held little appeal for marketers until recently because the adoption of wallets was so low. While this is starting to change now that a number of Android phones will soon come with Google Wallet preloaded on them and use of Apple Passbook continues to grow, this option offers a minimalistic loyalty experience that may not be right for all marketers.

“With the proliferation of loyalty programs, consumers have become inundated with plastic loyalty cards and smartphone loyalty apps,” said Ken Morris, principal at Boston Retail Partners. “Unless a consumer is a very frequent shopper, they won’t invest the effort to download a retailer’s loyalty app; and those that downloaded several apps are reaching the point of app fatigue.

“App-free loyalty programs are the way of the future, as it simplifies the adoption and use of loyalty programs.”

App proliferation
The expectation with loyalty applications has been that, by eliminating the need for a physical card and having the program live on the smartphones that consumers carry around everywhere, this would increase the interest in signing up for brands’ programs.

This expectation is one reason why so many marketers have introduced loyalty apps over the past couple of years, some of them a brand’s first entry into loyalty.

However, as the number of loyalty apps has proliferated, it is not clear that consumers’ interest is keeping pace.

“Fifty percent of consumers say they want to engage with programs via mobile,” said Sean Claessen, executive vice president of strategy and executive creative director at Bond Brand Loyalty. “However, there is a bit of mobile apathy.

“Twelve percent of consumers have downloaded a mobile loyalty program, almost double what it was last year,” he said. “Still 61 percent of smartphones owners who are also loyalty program participants are not even aware if the loyalty programs they are enrolled in offer an app.

“This could signal low interest. It definitely signals that there is low awareness around this.”

Loyalty fatigue
Mr. Claessen reports that Bond Brand Loyalty has had discussions with a number of marketers recently about whether or not they need a loyalty app.

“As a marketer, you just want to take stock of whether of not there is loyalty fatigue,” Mr. Claessen said. “If you don’t have enough utility to your mobile app, and enough frequency, then making it to one of the 7 apps on consumers’ phones, if you don’t make it into that mix, I am not sure that you, as a marketer, are going to see the return on that investment.”

One marketer that has chosen to go app-free is burrito chain Currito, which has 18 locations across Massachusetts, Maryland, Ohio, Kentucky, New Jersey and Pennsylvania. The chain recently began offering an app-free loyalty program, with members able to save the digital loyalty card to Passbook or Google Wallet.

One of the benefits of this strategy is that consumers do not need to take the extra step of downloading an app. At the same time, the marketer does not need to make the significant financial investment required to develop and maintain an app.

App-free
Going app-free may make sense for some marketers but not others.

For example, for a chain such as Starbucks, whose loyal customers tend to visit frequently, if not every day, having a well-rounded app that offers loyalty as well as other features and functionalities has proven to be successful.

In fact, Starbucks continues to build out functionality for its app, recently partnering with Spotify to integrate the music service’s streaming with My Starbucks Rewards, enabling customers to curate playlists for Starbucks stores (see story).

But, for marketers such as Currito that do not expect customers to return so frequently, a lighter mobile loyalty experience could be worth considering.

Besides greater adoption of mobile wallets, the marketing opportunities around wallets continues to improve, another reason marketers may be giving them a second look.

For example, SIM Partners and Vibes recently partnered to enable hyperlocal offers. After an offer is saved to Apple Passbook, marketers can trigger notifications when a consumer is within 100 meters of a location and/or use iBeacons to send messages and information to customers based on their proximity to, or position within, a location.

Offer channel
There are some drawbacks to going app-free that marketers should keep in mind.

For now, the strategy is still predominantly only going to reach iOS users. However, as the number of Android phones with Google Wallet preinstalled on them increase, this will change.

Marketers are also not able to gather as much rich user data through wallets that they can with an app.

There are also some limitations in terms of the number of offers marketers can provide in wallets.

“Are those wallets, really just a unique identifier repository or an offer channel,” Mr. Claessen said. “You can change the creative on the virtual card in Passbook but it doesn’t act like an offer channel like a loyalty app.”

Mobile wallets and apps are not the only options for mobile loyalty. Some marketers are also leveraging Wi-Fi, beacons and SMS to drive customer loyalty.

Still, much of the interest now appears to be around wallets and apps.

Some marketers may even consider offering both a mobile app and a wallet-based program for their loyalty strategy.

“Wallet-based mobile loyalty programs give consumers another choice in how they interact with a retailer’s loyalty program,” Boston Retail Partners’ Mr. Morris said. “Loyalty mobile apps will still appeal to very frequent shoppers of brands, as they enable expanded features like gamification, geolocation and use of consumers’ photo capabilities on their phone.

“Savvy retailers will continue to offer multiple interaction models for their loyalty program – physical cards, apps and wallet-based mobile programs – so consumers can choose the method that works best for them,” he said.

Final Take
Chantal Tode is senior editor on Mobile Commerce Daily, New York

Bad News: Your Mobile Business Is The Wrong Way Round. Here’s How To Fix It

business2community.com

One of the questions I frequently hear asked is “why now?”

In other words:

“Sure, I get that this stuff matters, and I understand that sooner or later we need to think carefully about the user experience and in-app marketing. But can’t it wait? Right now I am busy building out the app and acquiring users. Let’s get that sorted first before I worry about ‘nice to have’ marketing automation”

It isn’t much of a surprise to hear that view expressed. After all, since man first emerged from the dark ages and realised that people would buy things online, we’ve been in the grips of ‘acquisition fever’. Getting new users to the site was everything. A string of e-business failures was the result.

Here’s the deal: everything about this model is completely wrong-headed. And it’s even more wrong-headed when it comes to the app world. Why? Because in the app world, you don’t get a second chance. Do you really think that a user burned once by your app is going to go back and have another go after finding an alternative way to book a flight or order take out? No chance.

So if you are spending money to bring users to the app and don’t have confidence in your ability to monetize those users, NOW, you are heading for disaster.

The Lesson From Games

There is precisely one exception to this lunacy when it comes to the mobile app ecosystem. And it won’t surprise you to know it is the vertical that knows more about success on mobile (and has learned more hard lessons along the way). That vertical is free-to-play games.

We’ve worked with some of the biggest and most successful games companies in the world. Nobody has a more sophisticated understanding of how mobile works, and there is one rule that almost without exception, they all follow:

Never spend acquisition dollars until you are certain your title effectively retains and monetizes users

That stands to reason of course, but sometimes it is tough to live by. After all, in some cases what this effectively means is killing off a title that may be a creative success, and certainly viewed with fondness in the company. But that’s the way it works – without making tough decisions like these you’ll be spending big money on titles that can never deliver ROI.

As with all decisions, of course, that requires data. And in this case, the data is supplied by running the game during a trial period, rapid A/B testing of all relevant variables and campaigns, and then reaching an understanding about whether the title can or cannot deliver ROI. They need to answer the question: does the revenue that can be delivered by this title merit the proposed spend on acquisition?

Getting The Right Way Up

Outside of games, of course, nobody – or almost nobody – does this. That’s why digital businesses so often resemble short-lived comets – all sound and fury one day, the next somewhere beneath the horizon and a distant memory.

If you don’t want to be one of them, there’s a couple of simple steps you can take – and they don’t have to mean turning off acquisition entirely. Firstly, if it is a possibility, always look to test first before launch and acquisition spend. That testing should include both the app experience itself, but also the campaigns (such as push notifications or in-app messages) that are delivered to individual users. You need to know that when you turn on the acquisition tap, all those new mobile users aren’t just like water into a leaky sieve.

But even if you are already live, understand that the time to optimize experience for those in the app is NOW. There isn’t a second chance in the mobile app space, so acquiring users only to lose them is not an option. Don’t become another expensive failure – turn your mobile business the right way round!