By Robin Saluoks, co-founder and CEO of eAgronom.
getty
Do you speak Klingon, Dothraki or Valyrian? No, me neither. But that’s what I would sound like to my customers if I tried explain some of the details of our technology to them.
My customers are farmers who do backbreaking work from dusk until dawn to get food on our tables; they don’t have time to spend hours hunched over laptops keeping up-to-date with the latest software updates—and neither should they have to. Things need to just work, and if something does go wrong, there needs to be someone to call on.
There are many industries, or probably elements in any industry, where high tech needs to be translated to low-tech uses, which trust me, is no mean feat. Having spent the last eight years of my life doing just that, let me share some tips on how to get it right the first time.
1. Know Your Users
This may sound obvious, but it is harder than you might think. Confirmation bias—a human tendency to favor information that is consistent with our existing beliefs—is a big problem in software development that the industry is struggling to get a handle on. What this boils down to is you might think you know how your users think and act, but that could be far from reality.
Before embarking on product development, ideally, you should have personal experience of being a user in the particular field yourself, but if that is not possible, immerse yourself fully into that world. Of course, there are instances of disruptive innovation where technology nobody knew they needed has taken the world by storm; however, more often than not, technology should enrich life, not turn it upside down. Amazon may have made us all into online shoppers and Apple has made everyone carry a mini laptop in their pockets, but disruptive examples like that are far and few between.
2. Garner Continuous Feedback
At my company, we don’t sit in the office and think of ways to make farmers’ lives better. We talk to them. When we first launched our farm management software back in 2016, our platform wasn’t slick and all singing and dancing. I would go to meetings with farmers, come back to the office with new information and insights and then the developer team got to coding.
This rudimentary and, to some, seemingly haphazard way of working developed due to the chance events that led to our company’s formation, but it has meant that we have always been completely in tune with our customer base and have been able to build an intuitive platform that feels natural to use.
It’s also important not to be afraid of feedback. Don’t hide. Instead, take negative feedback on board and confront your mistakes. Nobody can get everything right the first time.
3. Deep Dive Into New Markets
When planning to enter new markets, you need to once again be aware of confirmation bias. You may think the neighboring market works the same way as your home market—that the culture, people and challenges are the same and that you can get away with an English version rather than localizing the software—but those decisions may come back to haunt you.
When we decided to enter Poland, for example, I temporarily moved there. Poland is the second largest grain producer in Europe, and we knew we had to get the market entry right the first time. I am not saying a drastic step like this is always necessary, but engaging experts on the ground who can provide insights on your target audience in order to hone in on strategy, messaging and approach are of critical importance.
4. Human-Facing Customer Service Powered By Technology
The past 10 years have seen a pivot toward technology-facing customer service powered by a combination of artificial intelligence, voice recognition and big data analytics. While these technologies are incredibly powerful tools, making them customer-facing while completely taking away the human element has not always been successful.
For those operating in traditional low-tech industries, I believe having a direct line to customers and keeping that line of communication open as they grow is crucial. This has always been my approach. Some industries, like farming, are traditionally suspicious of technology and big business needs to build its reputation on personal, human customer service—either face-to-face or over the phone.
This human front end, however, can be powered by a high-tech database that allows your consultants to have all the necessary information at their fingertips. I believe you can create the best of both worlds.
5. No-Code Development
Naturally, no two end-users organizations are the same and every entity has individual needs and requirements. For those “one size does not fit all” occasions, the emergence of the no-code software development approach can provide exciting opportunities.
Here, complex tech at the backend allows someone with the necessary institutional knowledge but with little or no technical know-how to create an application with the help of an easy-to-use visual interface that doesn’t require any code. No-code has amazing potential to provide personalized products and services in low-tech industries and it’s an area I see becoming bigger in the coming years.
Digital transformation has been spreading like wildfire across all industries, even if the pace has varied. While my farmer dad is a lot more tech-savvy today than 20 years ago, as is most of society, his day job is in the fields and the technology he uses needs to be intuitive, supportive and dependable. This can be translated to end users anywhere, in any situation.
The absolute key is usability. As a developer, you should know exactly how your customer works, what process they require and what the result needs to be. Here, we circle back to the first point: Know your audience.
