Why? Why not?
I get it. Documenting the value of one’s offerings is a lot
of work. The challenges are many and most agri-food technologists are ill
prepared to tackle the job of quantifying a return-on-investment for their
products and services. It is not impossible, though, and those who go through
the exercise will find that the results can help differentiate their offerings
from those of their competitors. 
The Hurdles
Customers are quick to provide those quick quotable quotes as to what they think about a product. Most marketing and sales folks may jot those words of endorsement down but when those innovative market leaders are pressed as to how it actually makes or saves them money the usual response is a little less specific. When questioned as to “how much” a product adds to the bottom line the answer is typically “not sure about that”.
One excuse might be that they are not open to sharing
information about ROI because they don’t really want their vendor to know that
they may have not priced their products in line with the value. Another reason
is that they probably have not taken the time to calculate the actual return.
Denominate, Denominate, Denominate
Clients are usually open in disclosing their positive, and
even negative, experiences when it comes to how well a tool of their trade might
have performed. All too often in the excitement of hearing something positive
the company representative just leaves it at that.
The key is to do what one old college professor used to say – “denominate,
denominate, denominate”. That is ask the question that leads to the question
that leads to the question as to “how does that REALLY help you?” Or when given
a response from a customer it is important to ask the follow up question “why
is THAT important?” and finally “can we go through the numbers on that topic?”.
Quantification
Some products are easier in assessing real value. Take
robotics, for example. Replacing a crew of workers with a mechanized weeding
and thinning machine can be denominated fairly simply. However, one still has
the issue of quality of the work completed with humans vs the consistency of
the equipment.
Biotech savings, yield and quality are pretty straight
forwards, too. Roundup Ready corn and soybeans demonstrated fairly easily the elimination
of costs of production, yield increases and decreases in defects.
Information systems present the biggest challenge in
determining ROI. Saving an hour here or there may mean that more time can be
spent engaging customers and prospects to determine their needs for more
products and services. How do you assess that? Or worse still what is the value
of better information overall? Better informed decisions? Try measuring that. Roll Up the Sleeves
It takes effort to get to the dollars associated with efficiency gains or the increase in yield and/or quality. That being said – it can be done and it can be well worth the effort. Without this information companies might be left with "take my word for it".
