From the President

Standards Implementation Moves the Industry Forward

By Brent Kemp, President and CEO

“What use are standards?”

That question comes up in many contexts, and maybe you’ve heard it before, or been the person to respond to a peer, supervisor, or trading partner. I know that when I’ve had to answer, I’ve replied with words like “efficiency,” “time and cost savings,” and “consistent implementation.” I believe these all to be accurate. And now I have a new one to share.

While participating in the March plenary for ISO/TC 347 on data-driven agrifood systems, the schedule included a panel discussion on how exactly some of the working groups related to each other. The presenters each talked about their particular area of effort: basic reference data; master data and master data resources; core documents or “messages,” and inference. Then, they shifted their focus, and this is what really caught my attention.

They posed a problem statement and provided context. Ag businesses, they stated, are increasingly invested in the customer’s success as a market strategy. Businesses recognize that simply selling product and sending the customer out the door without support, or tools, or expertise, leads to customers going elsewhere. Helping the customer solve problems, like correctly applying plant protection chemicals in compliance with the label, requires efficient data management, workflows, and the intelligence to implement actions. They laid out the requirements for solving the problem, in this case the need to identify active ingredients by product in order to manage record keeping and decision making.

Each level of standards was represented. They built on one another to solve the problem.

And then they posed other problems that the same standards stack could solve. Could they answer questions about whether substitute products were comparable? Could the application of the product be optimized over the field? Could systems determine if the equipment was optimized for use at the time of application?

Your businesses are asking similar questions, because that reality – the customer needs to solve problems, and is looking to you to help solve them – hits every level of the industry. At AgGateway, we start our work with the identification of a business problem, because the value of standards isn’t the standard. The value is found in the result of implementation which improves data quality, enables process efficiencies, lowers technical barriers to use, and can be leveraged to address emerging needs. Your work in AgGateway has developed many of the resources already available for you to implement. For example, AGIIS acts as a repository and access point for industry shared reference data on entity and product data, which can then be imported and used as part of a master data management program. You’ve also defined B2B messages that, when implemented, improve visibility to processes and reduce the time and hands needed to manage supply chain transactions. You’ve created and implemented messages and core documents defining the data needed to send product information from a retailer to equipment in the field.

Other core documents enable you to create work orders, record field operations, and then make use of standardized data to provide provenance reports of what happened, when, and how, to produce the customer’s harvest.

What use are standards? Correctly defined and implemented, they enable you to answer business problems about customer retention, service, and profitability. Implementation between you, your partners, and your partners’ partners will move the industry forward. AgGateway is the place where you can have those conversations, answer questions, and identify the next problems that you can use standards to solve.