CAPCO’S PRO-BONO SUPPORT OF A DIGITAL COMPANY IN THE LATIN AMERICAN AGRICULTURAL INDUSTRY
Two industries with seemingly little in common can face very similar issues. Due to an ever-evolving digital landscape in established and emerging markets, customers are increasingly expecting unified, seamless and intuitive digital platforms to interact with the world. Organizations ranging from large financial institutions to agricultural companies targeting rural smallholder farmers are both reaching a similar impasse: how do they improve customer experience and streamline operations by going digital?
Capco partnered with the Grameen Foundation to support its Bankers Without Borders initiative, leveraging our skillset to provide pro-bono advisory to a Latin American Digital Company. Based out of Mexico, the company’s mission is to raise the standard of living for rural smallholder farmers by helping them increase yield and participate in the modern agricultural lifecycle.
They uniquely approach this by leveraging digital information and communication technologies such as WhatsApp and SMS to provide farmers with timely and actionable information on climate, pest alerts and agricultural best practices. Becoming that critical communication channel between farmers and agribusinesses, research centers, and governments to disseminate this knowledge, driving benefits across the entire agricultural value chain.
Capco was engaged in providing a strategic assessment of the client’s current market position and define a strategy and implementation roadmap to support the company’s growth objectives. A team of consultants, comprised of Sabina Ghinescu, Nenad Vujcic, Alan Morgensztern, Ashish Debray, Seyitan Oke and Michael Lang, were assembled across strategy and technology domains out of the Toronto Capco office.
Through this assessment, we found parallels between Capco’s extensive work in financial services and the Latin American smallholder agricultural industry. Two principles of how enterprises, small or large, manage technological complexity and meet customer needs stood out :
1. Consumers are increasingly demanding a unified customer experience across all industries and channels
2. As the adoption of digital continues at its rapid pace, it is crucial to not only have digital products but to invest in digitized processes
With an ever-evolving digital landscape in established and emerging markets, customers are increasingly expecting unified and intuitive digital platforms to interact with the world. The client’s value proposition is built on its channel capabilities, disseminating information for agriculture. As a result, they must drive innovation in its digital platform, continually proving their value to current clients and growing their user base. We see this same requirement echoed in financial services, where the population is steadily becoming less reliant on tellers and prefer to bank in a digital, self-service fashion.
It is imperative to understand and design the journey from the customers’ point of view to create a unified platform. Whether a small agribusiness innovator or a large financial institution, it must leverage the market’s desire for a unified platform and innovate to create a digital platform that resonates with customers and provides ultimate ease of use.
With technological advancements and markets becoming progressively more digital, it is not only important to have digital products but also to invest in digitized processes. In advising, several opportunities and recommendations were related to increased automation and leveraging technology for streamlining processes. The client was already on the path of becoming an agile, digital native company that allows them to scale and move to new markets quickly.
Capco was able to provide specific recommendations targeted at the company’s technology architecture and back office to better position the company to remain flexible and scalable. Back office digitization is central to the technology work Capco does for financial services. We believe streamlining procedures to reduce cost and complexity is key to scaling businesses, no matter the size, industry or region.
Finally, we would like to thank the Grameen Foundation’s Bankers without Borders for the opportunity to support a deserving social enterprise on a pro-bono basis, as well as Chris Ford and Nebojsa Cukilo for lending their support. Working with the client was incredibly rewarding, and a valuable reminder that two industries with seemingly little in common face very similar issues. Because of these similarities, the Capco team was able to apply what we know best to help: how to drive improved customer experience by going digital.