A common misconception about ranchers, farmers, and agricultural supply companies is that they all exist in a perpetual technological antiquity. Nothing could be further from the truth. Today's agribusinesses have product managers who aim to ensure that their company's offerings are fully market-ready. To achieve that goal, they require the use of state-of-the-art tools. What's more, these agribusiness product managers are moving further and further from generic and legacy systems, be it email or spreadsheets, in favor of truly cutting-edge solutions.
Here's one example: Many product managers in agribusiness have adopted product roadmap management (PRM) tools. PRM provides a dashboard where all team members can access up-to-date information, visualize where they are in the production process, and remain fully in sync with their budgets, timelines, and goals.
Custom PRM tools have helped several agribusinesses achieve new levels of efficiency and success. In this post, we'll briefly consider a relevant case study: AGCO, a multi-national designer and manufacturer of agricultural machinery, enlisted a company called Gocious to help develop a custom PRM suite. The result was transformative.
The Problem
First and foremost, what problem brought AGCO to the Gocious team?
The company's product portfolio was becoming increasingly complex, with several interrelated parts and components that needed to be developed harmoniously and synchronically. At the same time, AGCO's customer base was expanding and expecting a higher level of responsive, dynamic technology.
Meanwhile, AGCO relied on old-fashioned solutions such as email threads and Excel spreadsheets to keep their projects moving. Such static, unimaginative tech didn't give the business the flexibility it needed to meet customer needs.
The Solution
Gocious addressed these concerns by developing a tailored PRM platform for the AGCO team. This program ensured all team members could access a single source of truth, visualize the production journey, and provide AGCO with the tools required to forecast upcoming needs. The bottom line is that this PRM platform made AGCO more agile and allowed their team to collaborate more seamlessly.
"We were invested in AGCO's mission and wanted to provide a unique solution that equipped product teams with all the capabilities needed to make a difference," explains Maziar Adl, the CTO and co-founder of Gocious.
"By understanding their challenges and relaying feedback in real-time, we pledged to help problem-solve solutions for AGCO's portfolio management needs throughout the entire onboarding process," he continues. "By taking the time to study AGCO's goals, we aimed to ensure our solutions brought value to all product teams and decision-makers. We truly believe in AGCO's core mission. When AGCO succeeds, their customers succeed."
The Results
The AGCO team feels enthusiastic about the collaboration.
"Our teams communicate more effectively, report to management more clearly, and engage ideas more thoughtfully," comments AGCO's Rodrigo Soeiro de Souza. "Gocious has helped modernize our approach and is infinitely better than PowerPoint and other legacy systems we've relied on in the past."
He continues, "We no longer spend time worrying about project management tasks that would slow us down. We can now focus on product management, setting our vision, and strategically planning the next generation of products."
To summarize, Gocious' innovative PRM solutions helped AGCO realize a number of important benefits. These include:
- All of AGCO's teams, from finance to product development to marketing, can now access a single source of truth, considerably streamlining their communication and collaboration efforts.
- AGCO now has a turnkey solution that gives its stakeholders much more visibility into the product life cycle.
- AGCO automatically generates visuals, giving management visibility into five—to ten-year roadmaps with just a click. AGCO brands and teams can now show interdependencies on shared components, another important way of bringing clarity to all stakeholders.
Forget Legacy Tech
This case study reveals a simple reality: Companies in agriculture and related spaces need best-in-class tools to enhance product development. Legacy and generic tech won't cut it. Only sophisticated PRM and similar tools can help today's product managers achieve at the highest level.
Gocious is a tech startup focused on innovative product roadmapping solutions. With its headquarters in California, Gocious is disrupting the manufacturing industry with its unique product roadmapping management software.
