Over six years, Optiweigh adoption has revealed a clear pattern: technology alone doesn’t create value … how producers use the data does.
This post is an extract from CEO and Co-Founder, Bill Mitchell’s fortnightly Optiweigh Insights email newsletter. To get a copy in your inbox, SUBSCRIBE HERE.
Over the past 6 years, it has been fascinating to observe the adoption and usage of Optiweigh units by different types of farmers.
What makes it so interesting is that we are now in a world of technology and data, but to reap the benefits, livestock producers need to learn how to utilise the technology and adapt their management practices.
Consider virtual fencing as a good example. Just like Optiweigh, it combines a reduction in workload with productivity gains. A win/win with great payback. But to get that payback, the people managing and operating the livestock production enterprise need to be able to learn how to use the app, learn how to interpret the data, and adopt a whole new approach to managing grazing rotations.
With Optiweigh, it’s similar. The unit needs to be put with the stock, the tub kept topped up with attractant, and the data monitored and acted upon.
So, is there a pattern around what types of farmers do this best? There sure is:
The Young vs the Old
When thinking about the adoption of technology, the most logical first assumption might be that young people who are more used to apps, spreadsheets, and the like, would be best placed to extract value. While they might be the quickest to work out how to log into the App, they don’t necessarily see the value of the data as clearly.
Many of our very best users of Optiweigh data are the older people who struggle most with Apps, websites, and logins. However, these are the people who have the years of experience that makes them twig faster to the value of the information, and how they can use it to best advantage.
They have taught us so much about how the data can be used to manage grazing rotations, hit market specs, and make improvements to the whole matrix of things that govern weight gain outcomes.
Family Farms vs Corporates
There are obviously lots of ownership structures about, from sole operators to large family businesses, and right through to the corporate structures.
Not surprisingly, the sole operators (including the family farms) get the hang of it fastest. Because they are the ones who are doing everything from the stock work through to the finances themselves, they see the value fastest, and they are the most motivated to make sure the tech works for them to get that value.
The larger family operations, with multiple employees, take longer. The problem is engagement of the employees when they are not seeing the end game. But, when the employees do get engaged, the results can be stunning.
We have heard of a variety of ideas for motivating staff to become engaged with the data, right through to weight gain competitions between two properties under the same ownership.
When the staff have a login to the App, and receive the daily email, they start to see the link between their actions in the paddock, and the weight gain rates of the animals. And once this happens, they often get to the stage where they are more in-tune with it than the owners.
Corporates often struggle. Which is weird when you think about the big picture of those companies, and the amount of money they stand to make from less labour costs and improved productivity. The problem is that while Head Office may be engaged with the data, there can be a pretty big disconnect to the people on the ground, particularly when the rate of employee turnover is high.
The stand-out thing is the inverse correlation between the number of layers of employees and the adoption rate of the technology. The technology itself won’t deliver the gains – it is how the information is used by the people working on the ground with the animals.
By its very nature, technology has issues and requires patience at times – everything from connections dropping out to data reports that can take time to interpret.
The motivation to overcome these issues comes from being invested in the outcomes. Which is why we always recommend giving everyone their own login, and access to the daily email.
It is also why we are working hard to improve the ease of interpretation of the information coming from Optiweigh units, and there are some big improvements coming that we are very excited about.