If you are a customer of ONDO, or if you have checked ONDO’s website, you already know that ONDO’s business model is based on a low upfront fee and then annual payments. This subscription-based business model is new and uncommon for the agricultural sector; however, it has been adopted by ONDO based on our long experience of interacting with farmers – including small and medium-sized ones – during which we have seen the difficulties they have with the adoption and continued usage of farming technologies.
This post comes to clarify the farmers’ needs behind ONDO’s subscription-based business model and the benefits farmers can get from it.
It is a general understanding that the farming sector is quite conservative, that farmers, particularly small and mid-size ones, are unwilling to adopt new technologies, that they are incapable of using them and so on. While this might be true for part of the farmers, the reality is that the majority of them, regardless of their farm size, are quite eager to use digitization to optimize and automate the processes on their farms, when they are aware of and convinced about the benefits that can reap.
But they do face issues with the affordability, ease of use, continued support and figuring the benefits of the agritech solutions which makes them often reluctant to make an investment in such solutions. ONDO’s subscription-based business model is aimed at tackling exactly those issues.
❌ Issue: Agritech solutions come with an upfront investment that farmers cannot afford.
For farmers, particularly small and mid-size ones, investing substantial money and time in the digitization of their farms is not easy. And when climate changes and the global crisis become a major factor impacting their crop predictability and even business existence, investments in technology are pushed down to the lowest priority.
✔️ Solution: ONDO’s business model offers a lower upfront investment.
When quoting your ONDO smart farming automation, we quote an initial cost and then annual subscription payments. The initial cost is kept low to ensure that precision farming automation is accessible even for the small and medium-sized farmer. This initial cost covers all investment we are making in hardware, software, cloud infrastructure and people to set up your precision farming automation, tune it for your farm and train you and your team to work efficiently with it. Rather than top up this cost with our profit, however, we distribute most of our profit over the annual payments.
❌ Issue: Agritech solutions generally lack continued support and updates.
Most agritech solutions are working well for the farm at the time of the install. But, as technologies and farmers’ needs evolve and the farming infrastructure gets upgraded, those solutions start lagging behind. But it is costly to have a solution engineer come on-site and perform upgrades. In addition, the farm staff is frequently changing or might have questions or issues working with or tuning the technology and equipment. Receiving support, however, is expensive and takes time. As a result, with time those technology solutions become outdated and less and less relied on.
✔️ Solution: ONDO’s annual payments include regular remote software upgrades and 24/7 timely support.
By practicing a business model including annual subscription payments, we ensure that your farm is always using the latest and most feature-rich version of ONDO software. We upgrade your software version at least once every 3 months, and critical updates are applied asap. You automatically get your software platform upgraded with all new ONDO features and improvements we release.
To guarantee that you can get any questions or issues responded to quickly, with emergency issues being guaranteed a 4-hour response time, we keep a trained support team available via all widely used communication channels – chats, emails, phone, etc.
❌ Issue: Adopting an Agritech solution is looked upon as a one-time deal by the solution provider, but the farmer needs an ongoing partnership.
With a business model involving a one-time payment, the solution provider usually stays in active contact with the farmer until the installation has been completed or for a short time afterwards. But crops change, the farmers’ needs and teams change, and the farmer, rather, needs an ongoing collaboration with the solution provider.
✔️ Solution: ONDO’s annual payments ensure long-term partnership and ongoing collaboration and communication with the customer.
Annual payments allow us to commit to ensuring a successful partnership for both parties.
On one end, the annual payments cover all our costs for software development, regular software upgrades, remote access services, hosting, maintaining a support team and others, while you rely on us for always providing you with a fully functional service, latest version of the software and timely support that can take action in line with the needs of your business.
On the other end, by staying connected with our customers, we ensure a constant flow of valuable feedback that we use to further improve our existing solutions and add new solutions to the ONDO suite. Our goal is to offer solutions that meet the needs of the farmers. Hence, staying in touch with farmers ensures that those needs are communicated to us and ONDO’s solutions updated to match them.
A business can only succeed if it helps its customers to be successful themselves. And we believe that a subscription-based business model allows ONDO customers to adopt precision farming automation and reap the huge benefits of it in the long run, having an efficient, reliable and supportive partner in the entire journey.
We would be glad if you choose ONDO for your business partner on the journey towards creating a more efficient and profitable farming business. Book a free consultation now
