How is the Field Force Management Tool helping improve the field operations for agri-businesses?
By Gangadhar G
Mahabharata has a fascinating subplot, if you are willing to let your imagination go wild, that could unleash the incredible potential of field force management. At the heart of this narrative, we encounter a blind king named Dhritarashtra, whose longing for visual perception parallels modern-day challenges faced by agribusinesses worldwide: the need for a solution that would optimize resource allocation, improve efficiency, and reduce costs.
In this enthralling saga, a remarkable character named Sanjaya emerges, embodying the essence of a cutting-edge solution—a Field Force Management System, that empowers businesses to conquer their operational obstacles with strategic brilliance.
Imagine, if you will, a world in turmoil, torn apart by rival kingdoms vying for dominance. The great Kurukshetra war looms on the horizon, poised to unleash destruction on an unimaginable scale. King Dhritarashtra, shrouded in darkness, yearns for the ability to witness the unfolding events with his own eyes, seeking solace in the power of foresight.
Enter Sanjaya, a trusted advisor bestowed with a divine gift—the ability to observe and comprehend the battles transpiring across the vast battlefield, despite his physical presence in the king’s chamber. With each passing day, Sanjaya becomes the living bridge, connecting the enigmatic realm of Kurukshetra to the blind king’s yearning heart.
Organizations today find themselves confronted with a battlefield of their own—an intricate network of field operations and a workforce dispersed far and wide. The challenges are manifold: tracking and managing remote teams, optimizing resource allocation, and making data-driven decisions in real time.
Field Force Management Software (FFMS) provides agri-businesses with a systematic approach to managing their employees and their myriad tasks. It offers a wide array of benefits, including tracking, scheduling, and administration. Its timely arrival coincided with the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic and compelled businesses to accelerate their digital transformation efforts to keep up with the evolving landscape.
India’s active internet population exceeded 700 million people as of December 2022, with 90% of them being daily internet users. At present, rural India accounts for over 425 million users – significantly higher than the 295 million plus users in urban India. With the current adoption rate of digital technologies, India clocked a 200% increase in rural internet subscriptions over the past six years. The increase in internet usage in rural areas is ensuring maximum integration of various software & technology tools that are helping the sector in understanding the retail universe better alongside monitoring and tracking the field operations.
Just as Dhritarashtra sought insight into the battlefield, modern businesses need a system that grants them the ability to see, understand, and respond effectively to the ever-changing dynamics of their field forces.
After the pandemic, the agricultural sector felt the impact of the digital revolution. Artificial Intelligence, drones, Computer-Aided Design, Robots, Sensors, and Machine Vision Techniques became commonplace. The government also implemented initiatives like the Digital Agriculture Mission 2021-25 to spur digital growth in agriculture and fasten the project implementation processes. This led to the emergence of over 1,000 agritech startups in India, contributing to the expanding digital-driven landscape of modern agriculture.
Much like Sanjaya’s supernatural prowess, in an era of digital transformation, the FFMS tool plays a pivotal role in agri-businesses, allowing them to cater directly to farmers and retailers without solely relying on existing distribution channels. Each agri-business is tasked with developing its proprietary FFMS tool, aligning it with the industry’s digitization trends.
Just as Sanjaya offered crucial counsel and strategic guidance to Dhritarashtra, the FFMS tool has been meticulously crafted to address the challenges faced by consumers in the agricultural industry. These challenges included crop seasonality, limited infrastructure and connectivity in rural areas, and the need to reach out to end users who might not be technologically savvy. However, the ground-level implementation of the FFMS tool posed its own hurdle—the field officers lacked sufficient knowledge about the tool and felt a sense of being overly monitored. Over time, the distrust moved away to a deeper understanding of purpose – collecting data that would impact scalability and yield measurable outputs.
Field Force Management stands as a technological cornerstone for agri-businesses, revolutionizing operations in sales and marketing, farmer and channel partner engagement. It encompassed an Agribusiness Intelligence Platform and an Agricultural Reasoning Intelligence Platform. The technological components of FFMS systems comprises Mobile & Web, Analytics, Remote Sensing, and Geographic Information Systems.
The three key pillars of FFMS are data administration, real-time communication, and cost-effectiveness. Each pillar supports a range of features, starting from segmentation and beat planning to demand generation activities and demonstrations. Online planning, visual aids, and reports facilitated seamless communication through SMS and email directly to farmers. The collection and segmentation of data from retailers guides the execution of activities and demonstrations, ensuring predefined processes and enhancing content management through channels like SMS and emails.
On the advanced end of the spectrum, the FFMS tool empowers field staff to identify nearby non-visited customers and access the historical interactions of farmers, retailers, and distributors. By incorporating these advanced features, agritech companies automates various field operation processes, enabling cost-savings and optimizing tasks among different stakeholders. The overall productivity of the workforce experienced a remarkable boost.
Let the saga of Sanjaya and Dhritarashtra serve as a timeless reminder of the power of technology which holistically improved operations and outputs for businesses in the agritech industry. It has helped provide solutions to address the conventional gaps with real-time visibility into the activities of field workers. This in return makes it easier for managers to plan, execute, and monitor field operations, giving utmost priority to improving the field force efficiency over anything else.
(The author is Gangadhar G, Co-Founder and CTO, iConcept Software Services, and the views expressed in this article are his own)
