Ag Tech Talk Podcast: Proagrica’s Peter Leppan on How the Company Brings Clarity and Insight Into the Entire Supply Chain
24 November 2023 
We’ve learned never to ask: “What else can go wrong?” because there’s a pretty good chance we just might find out. In the past few years, supply chains have experienced disruptions from war, pandemic and agriculture’s perennial nemesis weather, among other issues. While there will always be issues beyond a company’s control, insight into its own operations and members of its supply chain partners can help mitigate or even avoid the complications that come from those disruptions.
Podcast Transcript:
If the past few years have shown us anything it’s how critical it is to have an understanding of not only what’s happening in your operation, but also what’s happening with partners along your entire supply chain. Our guest today is Peter Leppan from Proagrica, a provider of data integration solutions. Proagrica’s offerings provide access to databases in support of Agronomy, Financial Management systems, Enterprise Resource Planning, Logistics, and other critical business operations. The company helps supply chain partners develop their own software platforms that require agricultural data elements to solve customer challenges.
AgriBusiness Global: Why don’t we tell people who you are and what Proagrica is all about?
Peter Leppan: I am the Vice President of Product for Proagrica on a part of a business which we call supply chain data solutions, which is very much around as the name kind of suggests working on the agricultural supply chain, and connecting up various different parties in that supply chain, whether it be distributors, manufacturers, ag retailers, logistics, service providers, etc.
Been in the role now, from our sort of things for about 18 months so relatively new. But I’ve been with Proagrica since its inception and been in the game of kind of creating connectivity in communities for the last 20-odd years from our side of things.
ABG: Okay, let’s talk about why that’s necessary. Why is that connectivity so important?
PL: A very good question to start off with. If you look around the agricultural industry at the moment, a lot of people that are talking about agricultural data and have been over the last couple of years. It’s not anything completely brand new. But the way that people are looking to access that data and utilize that data to make informed decisions about what they’re doing in their business and how their business moves. Going forward, in order to have that kind of data at your fingertips, you need the integration to take place in the background. So, you need people to be able to share different messages and information in a secure environment and quite quickly and easily between different partners.
A lot of that is driven by operational excellence. So, guys wanted to make sure that, for example, orders get turned around as quickly as possible. But other areas of it are looking at the future analytics of what does my supply chain look like? Where is my product moving and sitting? And how do I make better informed decisions about that using the data that’s flowing.
But, as I said, in order to get to that exciting stuff, you’ve got to make sure that the data is flowing. And then people are able to access that data that are allowed to access that data.
ABG: Security is always an issue, especially it seems like we’re hearing stories about data breaches all the time. Let’s talk about the hurdles in terms of enabling that integration, enabling that connectivity throughout the supply chain. What are the problems to getting that interconnectivity there?
PL: We did some research a little bit earlier this year. Out of that research, we’ve created a white paper, which is focused on digital integration, a fundamentally powerful next step to agricultural supply chain optimization. And through that research one of the hurdles that was uncovered is that approximately 60% of companies have been involved in some sort of a merger and acquisition over the last couple of years.
That’s from manufacturers all the way down to ag retailers. And even if you look at the distributors as well as being that kind of event, a coming together of different brands.
And as a result of that, it’s not uncommon to find organizations operating multiple different processes as they start to try and map out their back ends and get the processes aligned through the mergers and acquisitions.
And that can lead to data silos. It can also lead to difficulties for customers and partners to connect and work with those type of companies that have gone through that. So that’s one of the challenges that some of our customers will be facing at the moment. It’s not by any stretch the only one. In the agricultural industry data has traditionally been quite dirty, which has been hard to access.
But in a lot of cases as well, it’s been a lot of data and finding what that data means to a business is quite tricky. So, applying it to a business problem and solving those business problems. So, there’s been a lot of technical kind of challenges in terms of being able to access and get that data. And then also a number of business reasons as to our data has become a really big thing.
Everybody is really excited about what it could do and mean to the agriculture industry. And then, as people poured into it and started investing a lot of money on it, people then started looking and saying: ‘Wow, we’ve got a lot of data.’ It goes from cows talking to the clouds, to your farmer in the field with his tractor all the way to the supply chain data being transferred around, and it then becomes a question of what is valuable in that data to make informed decisions that have a real impact on the business going forward. So, it’s almost like you’ve got the technical challenges, some of the mergers and acquisitions coming together, and the challenges of that bringing the processes together for some of our customers. And then what does unlocking data mean for the business in terms of a real-world value, basically. Some of the challenges that we see with our customers.
ABG: Very good. It was suggested that digital integration should be the first step when you’re when you’re putting together an organization’s operation. So why is it so important for that to be at the forefront of the issue.
PL: When we started in this business some 20 years ago, connecting partners, a lot of the drive was around, making sure that they were operational efficiencies. So, saving time and people’s productivity in terms of making sure that there wasn’t recapture update and all that kind of good stuff.
I’d say over the last couple of years, with Covid, there’s been a bit of almost a perfect storm in the agricultural industry, with the various different factors coming to bear, and that’s got people understanding and looking at supply chain slightly differently, and saying: ‘Well, how do we start to be more proactive, be able to better manage our inventory and our supply chain, so that we don’t get caught short if, God forbid there is another global pandemic, or some other event occurs in the supply chain that makes it difficult to move goods around and slows things down.’
A lot of companies moved from that: ‘Okay, we need productivity and savings, etc., etc.’ It’s understanding that having the information flowing and available to you allows you to react more proactively to some of the challenges that we see on a daily basis.
So, in terms of having that as a first step in your process it’s pretty important then, to plan it out, because people just saying ‘Hey, save me a couple of bucks on making sure I don’t have to recapture this information, and there’s no finger trouble, etc., etc.’ Now, it’s more around: ‘Okay, if we structure our data and we structure these messages in the right way, what other value can we achieve out of that – still getting the productivity gains and all the wonderful things that come along with that? But then, for example, are we able to better manage our third-party logistics providers in terms of their delivery to our customers, and the impact that it has on our customers. So, there’s a lot more thought that needs to go into a digital strategy if you will, and integration and moving of messages is key in that, because if you get it wrong, you can always go back and adjust. But if you spend a bit of time planning and getting it right, it makes it easier to move along and can account for some of the things that happen on a day-to-day basis in the world.
A good example is traceability.
Something we’re keenly involved in Europe at the moment is becoming more and more of a requirement not only driven by good corporate governance, but by some of the legislation coming out of Europe on crop protection specifically, and in some cases where we set those message transfers and processes up with our customers already, it becomes a different use case to a similar message set. So, where we’re doing orders and movement messages, etc., etc., by adding the traceability elements into that you can respond quicker to those changes in the environment than if you have to start from scratch. So, a lot of thought does need to go into how you set up that integration and what it is that you’re looking to achieve out of that going forward.
ABG: Very good. Let’s talk about a specific case. Our listeners are primarily providers and distributors of crop inputs. So how can having this connectivity, this integrated communication? Help manage the flow of crop inputs, or any materials that they would use in their operations?
PL: Again, really good question. You’ve got to have that data to make the right decisions about where you’re sending your products or your goods. And we know in the agricultural sector, for example, the margins for getting that wrong are pretty slim. The time frames around getting the right product to the car he’s going to be putting into his field, you’ve got to be pretty on the ball with that from that perspective. So, as an example for some of our customers looking to get a better view of inventory where it’s managed with sitting, and how they can influence that once it’s out in the field. So, in some cases they might be sending it to the north of the country, a specific seed type or variant, for example, and there is a shortage of that same requirements in the south of the country. But if you don’t have data to put those blocks together, where’s the inventory, where’s the demand coming from? Who needs it? Who has it and who doesn’t have it?
It then becomes difficult to say, ‘Oh, shift, strategy! Move that stuff from there to there.’ And in some cases, in worst cases, some guys are then left with a whole lot of inventory that comes back at the end of the season because they didn’t know where it was sitting, and it was sitting in an area where it wasn’t really needed and couldn’t be sold as opposed to an area where it could’ve. And then you’ve got reverse logistics. You’ve got a whole nightmare managing that back from that perspective, plus a whole lot of lost sales or not having a good handle on your inventory. So yeah, that’s some of the practical examples that we see. There’re others where it’s around making it easier to work with for the customer.
So, having various different ways of a customer to touch on you in terms of being able to place orders, get information back around what’s going on with the order, etc., etc., and that can be through pure integration, through web portal, through various different means from that perspective. Some real solid examples of how integration in a supply chain impacts the bottom line and customer service and all of those good things that everybody’s looking at, at the moment.
ABG: I recently wrote a story about glufosinate in an oversupply situation because of price fluctuations. People were afraid. They buy a lot when it goes down the price goes down, and there’s, a lot in the market. And Nick, these are afraid the price is going to go up. And is this sort of like the kind of thing that might help get resolved more quickly or not even happen if you have communication?
PL: There is a case to made from that. If you have an understanding of where your stock is sitting, and where you might be overstocked in a specific area — from the integration and visibility of your information, then you can avoid those. I think some of those are not going to avoid all of those cause we know, fertilizer prices up and down, and it’s sometimes difficult to manage those.
But if you have a better view of that, then you can start to have decisions made before it becomes a major crisis. So, it will solve some of that. But there are obviously other factors at play that impact the agricultural situation on a daily basis, which are a little bit outside of voice control, unfortunately.
ABG: And when we know humans are involved they always don’t make the most rational decisions, even when the data is in front of them. So, what’s Proagrica’s role that you take in integrating that digitization across the agricultural supply chain. Where does your company fit into all that?
PL: We’re very involved on a number of different levels. So as a kind of like hinted at before, we’re involved where we’re talking to customers about what their end-goals are and what they’re wanting to achieve from their perspective. So, helping them to kind of almost work through the process of saying: ‘What is it that I want to achieve out of my data. And how do I then structure technically to make sure that that data provides the results I’m looking for?’ And then also to monitor and make sure that you adjust to that as well, because you don’t always get a right the first time, and sometimes you’ve got to you experiments a little bit from that sort of thing, which we’ve had a lot of experience in over the last couple of years.
So, it’s a we-get-it-right-more-often-than-not type of thing. So, if, almost from a like an advisory point of view to work with customers to understand the challenges that they’re facing what they wanting to achieve from this sort of thing and then telling them the art of what’s possible, basically because you can get really lost in what data can do. Throw AI into the mix and we want to do this, that in the next thing, and then you lose sight of some of the business reasons that you’re doing it, and then you head off in a direction. You turn around, and 12 months later you’ve added no value, and you’re suddenly questioning: ‘Why are we doing this in the first place. So, that’s one area.
The other area, from our perspective, is on the technical side of things, it should be easy to do integration and to move data around and to share it. It’s not always.
People are specialists in what they do. Agronomist run around in the fields, doing agronomy, giving advice, etc. Sometimes you need integration experts to assist in making that process happen. So, (we help) on the technical side of things as well. We also provide various ways for people to connect up and share that data securely, obviously, from that perspective. And depending on how big the size of the project is – or what they’re trying to take from it a perspective, we’ve got different solutions from which both tools to mobile devices, to fully integrate solutions that can help them. So, from an advisory point of view in terms of what you’re trying to achieve from a technical point of view, and actually helping to execute and make that work. And then also from what I call a network effect where we are very strong in the agricultural industry, have a pretty vast footprint in the number of connected parties — so in a lot of cases we’re connected to somebody that you wanted to do business with. So, it’s not always starting from scratch. You can always leave leapfrog one or two steps and start connecting to this network that we have basically. Those are some of the areas that we play in from our perspective and help advise our customers from.
ABG: It certainly makes sense that this would be beneficial for the supply chain for the interconnectivity along the supply chain. But is it something that even one company can benefit from if their partners aren’t quite ready or as far along in the process?
PL: The more connected parties you have, the bigger the bang for the buck and the bigger the benefit effectively from that perspective. But yeah, we have seen, against some of our research, all of those companies having mergers, etc., where there is a benefit to starting, understanding how you unlock your data within your organization. So, you don’t have to be automatically connected to thousands of people to get the benefits from what you’re trying to do from your sort of things, and in some cases some of our customers are connected to two or three principal partners from their perspective, because that’s where a lot of their channel to market might go from their perspective.
It’s not always connected to everybody in the world to get the benefit. And certainly, some of the work that we’ve done with our customers in terms of helping them between different systems in their own environments. So whether it’s between a CRM system and their financial system or branch dealership systems, or farm/field systems, etc., etc., we’ve helped them create that connectivity within their own environments to realize opportunities within their silo datasets. So certainly not a prerequisite that you have to be connected to the whole world or to hundreds of partners in order to get a get a benefit out of it. There’re definitely cases where we’ve helped and continue to do that with some of our immediate customers within their environment.
ABG: My tentative last question is always the same, and that’s what else do our listeners need to know about Proagrica or the services you offer?
PL: We’re in the agricultural industry. Sometimes that’s something that’s overlooked. I remember I started my career years ago in the manufacturing industry – automotive. And I thought: “Agriculture, it’s easy. They put some seeds in the ground, you water it and boom! You’ve got some crop stuff. It took me a while to understand that there are more complexities in the agricultural supply chain, both down from manufacturers down to the farm, and then from on the farm, obviously loads of complexities there and then up the other side of that. So, I think that’s a pretty key element from outside of things is that we have that expertise, the hard-won knowledge and the battle scars and what works and what doesn’t work.
We’re a company that is working with the industry to understand the data, what happens with that data, where it goes, and how that applies not only to businesses, but also the traceability that we’re working with.
So, some of the traceability elements are not just specifically for a specific customer to get a value out of it. But it’s for an industry. We work with individual customers. But we work with industry, and we’re looking at ways to improve how people share the data, and then obviously make sure that that data adds value to their lives.
From a Proagrica perspective as well we’re kind of unique in that. We have all of this knowledge and connectivity down the supply chain.
So, when I say from manufacturer all the way down to farm, and then the other part of our business is all around the farm from that perspective. So, what happens on the farm, how the agronomy guys interact, farm management systems, etc. These are all elements that are creating data and create a flow from manufacturer to farm. And then you just imagine going up the other side of the supply chain all the way to you and me as the consumer eating the rice or the citrus fruit that’s developed. So, that’s some of the key elements around Proagrica.
Aggressively curious in terms of how we help our customers. Everybody likes to win, and we like to see our customers win and help them be a part of that winning formula if you will. There isn’t really a roadmap associated with data in agriculture. And we’re quite excited to be a part of pulling that out with our customers and guarding that along.
ABG: Have you found any unique challenges in agriculture that maybe you weren’t expecting that are different than, say, the automotive or other industries you may have explored a little bit?
PL: Oh, yeah, for sure. Very definitely. The one example I always pull out is seed processes like, you’re building a car.
You’ve got just-in-time, and you’ve got kanban and all that kind of good stuff to get the parts onto the production line and all that good stuff. And when you’re selling seeds into the market, it’s not as certain as that, because almost right up until the day that you’re going out to open the ordering book to your customers, you’re not quite 100% sure of the stock that you’re going to have for seed sales going forward. And then you can’t say everybody can have whatever they want. You’ve got to manage that expectation for customers about how much they can have, so that they can all be looked after. So that’s the other one always stands out to me. And then 10 years ago we didn’t have cows talking to the cloud and telling you if it’s limping, or how many times it’s eaten, or you know, if it’s lying down too much, etc., etc. Nobody cares if your car’s parked for too long, or whatever the case. So, it’s definitely slightly different challenges there. And then just the amount of data in agriculture. Everything’s producing data. Even your pets have things telling you about how they’re behaving. There is a huge amount of data in agriculture.
And sometimes it’s just sifting through that to get to what actually that means from a business benefit point of view, because you can oversell it for sure quite easily and say: ‘Hey, if we do this, you’re going to feed 50 million people by the end of the year, whatever the case may be, silly numbers. But it is a lot more than that in terms of the amount of data, and how you start to unlock the value of that data. So, I think that’s one of the big challenges in agriculture is still unlocking the value of that data to the business. Whether it’s the ag retailer, the manufacturer, the farmer, or the end consumer. At the end of the day there’s a lot of work still to be done around that, and that’s certainly different to some of the other industries that I’ve worked in with integration and data.
ABG: Very good. This has been very enlightening. Any other thoughts?
PL: No, I could probably go on for hours, Dan. But it is an exciting part of the business. It is an exciting time for agriculture at the moment. I know that’s not often the case when you get on the ground, and you know everybody’s facing some tough times. But, as I said, just the getting the gas connected, and then the ability to unlock the value of that data is key to making sure that big data and agriculture is not just a buzz word that we’re talking about in five years. We all remember Y2K, and what that was like. So, there’s a lot of work still to be done on that. And I think it’s exciting, because you have got some of the best minds in agriculture applying themselves to it, and I’m certain we’ll see some really good value additionally coming through from that.
Some of the use cases or the things that we’re involved with, now weren’t even thought about five or 10 years ago — carbon credits. Who’d ever heard of that? It’s a fast moving industry, and it’s quite exciting to be a part of it.
ABG: Okay? Just based on that answer, I’ll ask another question. Because it’s so fast moving, because we’re seeing so many different things. We’re hearing a lot about artificial intelligence now. And regulatory (issues) change all the time. Things are changing all the time. How adaptable is your system. Does it need to be, or is it just by the nature of it being a communication system, it’s really sort of the user’s responsibility to make sure they’re using it properly?
PL: It’s on the Proagrica side of things. It’s always been a partnership with the customers that we work from our side of things. It’s never just the user’s responsibility to unlock that, and the system that we have from our side of things is flexible.
We’ve seen use cases where we started with ‘We want to be able to save time and money and effort from our perspective that is now being used in, with a slight tweak to say: ‘Well, now we can provide traceability to satisfy legislation, etc. without having to rebuild the entire house. If that makes sense. So yes, we are flexible from a Proagrica prospective.
But listening to the market is important, because it is changing quite quickly. And that’s part of the process in understanding what data means in agriculture is that you trust? I mean you fail, then you move on to the next thing to unlock that value. So, I’ll take that as a positive, not as a negative, that it’s changing from that perspective. And it does kind of help you to iron out some of the things that are not going to work and all maybe just too far-fetched in the practical world. Our system is very responsive to that. A lot of the stuff that we’ve done in the past requires a small tweak, and then suddenly a use case for satisfying orders for a customer, and where they could those results, and then traceability. And then suddenly we were able to provide more information about where your products are so that you can better manage your inventory. And some guys are experimenting with different ways of engaging the customers, whether it’s a pay-for-performance or if it’s a consignment type of situation to help the smaller distributors with their cash flow. Got tools to help with all of that, and it is going to be driven by the data. Because if you don’t have the data, you’re not going to be able to say pay for performance, or what is my inventory? And how much is the got sold. What do the rebates look like? etc., etc.
A very long answer to your question. But I would say, we’re pretty agile in that respect, and we are working very closely with our customers to understand where they’re going from a perspective, because this is a fast-paced, changing industry.
And that is, as I said, quite exciting. But you’ve got to be close to the industry in order to make sure that that you don’t take a left turn instead of a right turn, for example.
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