Q&A with Matt Waits: What 2021 will mean for Sirrus iOS.
Presented By Proagrica Proagrica’s Sirrus app is known for the value it provides to agronomists with data collection for soil sampling and scouting, as well recommendation creation. However, in the coming months, Proagrica has big plans in the pipeline for their agronomic app. President of Ag Solutions, Matt Waits sat down to talk a bit about the upcoming updates, and what they’ll mean for their customers.
How are Sirrus customers deriving value from Sirrus today?
Today Sirrus has very strong in-field scouting and recommendation-writing capabilities. We’re providing functionality that gives the customers access to in-season satellite imagery that can be used for directed scouting, and from that, they can create pesticide, seed, and fertilizer recommendations. It also provides the ability to manage variable rate fertilizer recommendations, where they can view, edit, and export recommendations directly from their iPhone or iPad. And it also has full record-keeping capability for on-farm agronomic data collection.
What will you be introducing in this new Sirrus release?
Well, what we’ve been wanting is the full workflow throughout the season. So, these new additions are going to introduce the ability to capture pre-season plans and do that in collaboration with a grower who’s also using the app. They can then use those plans to drive work orders throughout the season as it comes time to execute on those plans, and then have a completed work record in the end. So from that, we’ll have the completed journey of planning to work orders to completed work. And then with the recommendation functionality that’s there as well, the recs can be made throughout the season and then submitted to the farmer for acceptance into their work plan.
What’s the benefit to the customers with these changes?
Historically, we have been very focused on soil fertility and traditional precision ag program management. While those are very important components of an agronomist’s service offering, they are too narrowly focused to provide what the market really needs, which is a holistic farm management solution. Our goal is to continue to broaden our offering so that we are providing agronomists the avenue to deliver a comprehensive level of service to their customers. This starts with planning. In most cases agronomists and farmers are planning in spreadsheets that serve as a starting point but is quickly abandoned once the season gets underway. Our goal is to create a collaborative workflow tool that brings the plan to life so that it can be easily adjusted as things change throughout the season. This can be accomplished by the plan living within the same solution that agronomists are using to create in-season recommendations and from which the grower is recording completed work.
What’s your vision for how growers and agronomists will collaborate with Sirrus?
If you want an accurate view of what’s being planned and executed on a farm, you need farmers and agronomists both involved in that process. There are a lot of operations that are decided and executed by the farmer that may not involve the agronomist. So, you need the farmer’s input and data in order to have the full view with what’s happening on the farm. Plus, growers are gradually wanting to have more access to their data, so it’s important that we are able to create a collaborative system where growers and agronomists can work together on creating plans and executing on the in-season work, as well as the interpretation of the outcomes.
After these changes are released, where do you see Sirrus going in the future?
A lot of the future roadmaps are going to revolve around providing insights regarding the data. A lot of what we’re working on today is collaboration of data collection, and the workflow between an agronomist making recs, and a grower accepting those and executing on them. Where we’ll really start turning our attention is on providing analytical insights on the performance of those operations. For example, helping growers to understand which seeds perform best on which fields and soil types, and how crop protection products affect the outcomes of yield. We’ll also be doing more with imagery to provide better in-season understanding of crop progress and help identify issues before they’re seen by a person. We’re also going to be working more on tightening up the integration with equipment manufacturers so that the data flows more seamlessly from the input machinery to the Sirrus app.
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Proagrica’s ongoing mission is to integrate and revolutionize data capabilities across the agricultural supply chain to create future productivity gains for customers. Matt has led the integration of two businesses solutions that enhance the services provided to agronomists and growers. This integration has opened exciting opportunities for the development of business intelligence and analytics tools.
Currently working on cross-platform integration for Proagrica’s suite of data solutions through increased visibility and communication, Matt is determined to see the vision of profitable and cohesive data-driven agriculture become a reality.
If you already have the Sirrus app, keep an eye on your inbox for notifications of the new updates. If you don’t have the Sirrus app yet, you can download it for free here.