Project results
- 24/7 availability.
- 2,000 interactions per month with users through messaging.
- +100,000 notifications delivered from the app.
AgrodatAi is a Colombian company dedicated to developing technology solutions for the agricultural sector. The company seeks to provide tools to the different stakeholders in the production chain to help them make better decisions based on their business needs, location, and products of interest, while also fostering connections among them.
In 2018, it joined Google Cloud to take another step forward in the quality of service it provides to customers and address the major challenges of the agricultural sector.
One of the company's major challenges was starting a process to organize information and thereby provide a centralized service. As Juan Pablo López, Project Leader at AgrodatAi, explains, “In Colombia, information in the agricultural sector is very scattered. One of our first challenges was centralizing more than 100 public and private databases to access valuable information in one place and in a common language.”
AgrodatAi promotes a solution to organize, capture, process, and add value to agroecological, weather, market, production, and yield information, among other data, to facilitate decision-making. It also creates connections to arrange agricultural credit and insurance.
A path closer to the producer
One of the main objectives was to calculate the optimal locations for selling products. The company therefore set out to build a model connecting the locations of production units (farms) with different marketplaces or livestock auctions nationwide.
To take the first step in building this model, the support and guidance of Servinformación, a Google Cloud partner, were crucial. It trained all team members to begin their journey toward digital innovation, complemented by the agricultural expertise of one of its partners, SFA Cebar.
AgrodatAi understood that the starting point for achieving its goal was to create a tool that was easy to use, understandable, and approachable for users. This need gave rise to the chatbot “Don Tulio, your agricultural advisor.”
Lack of Internet coverage and limited access to computers in Colombia's rural areas presented AgrodatAi with its first major challenge: building a tool accessible 24/7.
Users can connect with Don Tulio through different channels, via chat or by receiving text messages on conventional mobile phones or smartphones. This way, the company addresses another industry challenge: digital literacy.
“Our goal was to get closer to agricultural producers. With Don Tulio, we have been able to listen to them and understand what they really need. Ultimately, it is a way to get to know them and feel closer to them.”
—Carolina Huertas Garcés, Manager, AgrodatAi
Alongside support from Servinformación and SFA Cebar, introducing the tools through partnerships with industry groups and producer associations that promote these technologies was key. This has made it possible to improve the user experience and provide the solution to them free of charge.
Indeed, as Carolina Huertas Garcés points out, “with Don Tulio, we created a solution that allows producers to find out which markets are best for selling their products,” addressing the need for reliable information.
The implementation stage
The process began in 2018 and lasted 10 months. During this phase, Google Cloud tools enabled the development of the “Best Sales Option” model, which provides agricultural producers with information to strengthen their bargaining power when selling their products.
The second phase began in late 2019 and concluded in December 2020. During this stage, “Don Tulio” was central to the change, and Dialogflow played a key role.
“Don Tulio is how we reach producers, but also an opportunity to provide them with much more information and advice on different topics, both technical and business-model-related. Using AI for this is an enormous growth opportunity.”
—Juan Pablo López, Project Leader, AgrodatAi
Google Cloud tools have been key in these first two stages, enabling AgrodatAi to create a solution with major competitive advantages in the technology market serving the agricultural sector.
Vertex AI enabled the scaling of more than 60 predictive pricing models for agricultural products in different markets, while Dataflow and Firebase have been essential for storing the user information needed to interact with the platform.
It has also enabled direct messaging in mobile applications, sending more than 100,000 notifications from the app through Firebase Cloud Messaging.
With BigQuery, they were able to store all the information processed in Dataflow in just seconds.
“At Servinformación, we knew Google Cloud was the most suitable cloud platform. We not only had experience from other projects, but also understood that data warehouse, Google Maps, App Engine, and Dialogflow solutions would be key.”
—Mónica Patiño, President, Servinformación
The solution's first results
With “Don Tulio, your agricultural advisor,” AgrodatAi provides farmers with information quickly. Within 5 to 10 seconds of submitting a query to the bot, the producer receives an answer. Thanks to Dialogflow, the company was also able to handle more than 2,000 user interactions per month through messaging.
The speed and accuracy of the information make this tool reliable and accessible in real time.
The company currently has more than 20,000 registered users, most of whom are agricultural producers who receive the service free of charge. Its goal is to end 2021 with a total of 50,000 registered agricultural producers.
By implementing CI/CD (continuous integration and delivery) strategies with Cloud Build, the company also automated the delivery of services and applications quickly and efficiently. Using Firebase Dynamic Links, it provided passwordless access to more than 8,000 users.
Thanks to the tools' demand- or usage-based billing model, AgrodatAi was able to reduce costs in project planning.
The acceleration of change
The circumstances presented AgrodatAi with new challenges. Faced with changing work routines and increased demand, the company decided to move into a new phase.
In November 2020, the company relaunched the platform and updated producer registration, usage frequency, and increased browsing time as a result of new communication channels and new connection tools associated with agricultural credit and insurance.
With Google Cloud tools, AgrodatAi is constantly transforming and evolving in response to changing business needs, which influence the development and construction of each feature of the service the company provides.
The company's development is currently focused on providing Internet of Things (IoT) services to capture specific data from producers' production units.
To achieve this, the company is considering Cloud Composer, which provides easy, automated management, as well as BigQuery ML to build recommendation models, and IoT Core. This will allow it to add the information it expects to capture from IoT sensors and manage data from each production unit.
They are also working on the development of “La Plaza de AgrodatAi,” a space where agricultural products can be bought and sold, as well as continually updating and improving the platform's user experience. This will enable continued development of the “Don Tulio” chatbot to work through text messaging, with the goal of reaching rural areas without Internet access.
Looking ahead, AgrodatAi plans to build a tool for crop monitoring through satellite images, as well as image-based pest and disease queries through “Don Tulio,” working with Google Cloud, Servinformación, and SFA Cebar.
