BI for agribusiness: Areas to monitor and optimize results

Learn how BI can bring innovation to a wide range of applications in agribusiness, from farm machinery monitoring to combating pests and disease.

Business Intelligence can bring countless advantages and innovations to agribusiness. Beyond profit analysis and other financial indicators, we can show you other areas where BI can be your biggest ally, in addition to key metrics to help you achieve positive results.

To give you some idea of everything BI enables, have you ever imagined how a data-driven platform could help you create complete, customized reports? Besides saving you time, it can lead to easier decision-making. Moreover, predictive analysis based on artificial intelligence can help you and your farms see what’s coming down the pike and stay ahead of the curve.

Have you ever imagined how powerful this information could be?

BI for agribusiness: Monitoring tools to give you full control over your farm

1 – Monitoring field management equipment

Discussing agribusiness and technology means discussing agricultural machinery automation, a growing reality in rural areas. This technology logs what each machine does every second of the day, and it can benefit from Business Intelligence tools.

Constant monitoring and data collection allows you to assess equipment failure risks and prevent unplanned emergencies. In addition, fleet preventive maintenance can improve machine performance and ensure each piece of equipment is used to the fullest over its lifetime.

2 – Combating pests and diseases

If you can monitor machines, you can also monitor pests and diseases, especially with the help of new technologies, such as drones and sensors. With monitoring systems and the information they provide, you can make decisions before a problem can spread to the rest of your farm. In plain old English, you can root it out.

Here, we go back to a topic introduced earlier in this article: anticipating factors that can impact your farm. For instance, you can group specific data about when fall armyworms strike your soy fields early or late in the crop cycle. This allows you to make laser-focused decisions on how to fight an infestation.

3 – Transshipment

Managing logistics operations in the field can be a major headache, since managers often have to handle a wide range of factors, including common land, shipments, and transportation.

With BI tools, process automation can help optimize your operations. Based on real-time information and demand projections, transshipment can be allocated to harvesters much faster than before.

BI for agribusiness: KPIs and indicators to watch out for

1 – Input costs

Includes time spent actually using inputs and the cost per hour of labor. These values need to be added to input costs and expenses related to machinery, such as fuel and depreciation.

2 – Pesticide costs

They basically work just like any other input cost KPI, but focused on pesticide use and pest control.

3 – Hours worked

This includes machine use times and hours worked by employees. To compute this indicator, divide the time in hours by crop, varietal, area, farm, etc.

4 – Crop yields

This metric measures the yield of specific crops over a given period of time—bushels per month or tons per semester, for example.

5 – Due dates

Like the name says, it tracks upcoming due dates for everything from paying vendors to delivering the crop.

6 – Task management

This includes abandoned tasks and delays, as well as your to-do list. It should prioritize demands, such as suggesting purchases in order to prevent shortfalls in key inputs from harming crop plans.

Do you know what all of these metrics have in common? BI can help you stay on top of every single one, intuitively, easily, and focused on results.

Implement a BI solution in your agribusiness enterprise

In addition, you can count on BI solutions capable of managing all production data. BlueMetrics offers data analytics solutions by Sisense, a global leader in this segment.

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