One year ago John Deere announced a partnership with DN2K to create a joint venture called Sage Insights. The result of that venture is MyAgCentral, and Pat Pinkston, VP of Technology and Information Solutions, took the time to tell AgWired a little more about the program at the recent InfoAg Conference in St. Louis, Missouri.
MyAgCentral focuses on the needs of retailers and a growers trusted advisors. It works with the Operations Center, and like Operations Center, the platform is quickly growing. Last year Sage Insights had 13 or 14 third party companies. Now they have more than 30, and each of them can be used to integrate with customers, Pinkston says.
The best way to understand the platform is to think of the required workflow for fall harvest. Growers need to alert someone when they finish harvesting a field so soil samples can be gathered. Someone needs to report on the soil sample results and then make calls necessary to get as applied maps. All of this takes multiple phone calls, emails and text messages. Now, if a grower is in MyAgCentral, the system is notified when harvest is finished and a work order for soil samples is automatically generated. When results are sent back another work order for the prescription map is automatically filled and all of this happens without contact from the farmer.
Pinkston explains the platform helps the farmer by helping the team around him, like improving the communication between assistant coaches.
“What we’re trying to do is focus on that overall workflow and really make that whole process seamless for the grower,” he says. “Because they’re looking not only for someone to do the work, provide the prescription, but to enable that flow of that work. So by creating that environment, that MyAgCentral environment for the retailer that is seamlessly connected to the Operations Center, now that grower who is in the Operations Center (again, by the way, regardless of whether they have green equipment, red equipment or blue equipment, because we now enable all of those) they can get that data to their ag retailer, seamlessly connect up their data, seamlessly connect up the work, and enable that work flow to be accomplished with very little, fuss, muss, or bother.”
The program is still brand new, and currently the company is building out additional features and connections, but Pinkston hints at announcements about retailers who are signing on. The process proves to him that John Deere truly is committed to providing that total solution.
You can hear more about MyAgCentral in Chuck’s interview: [wpaudio url=”http://traffic.libsyn.com/zimmcomm/infoag-16-deere-pinkston.mp3″ text=”Interview with Pat Pinkston, Sage Insights”]
