Apr-Jul 2023

User Research & Discovery

Conducted 15 remote interviews with 3 partner segments, and 5 in-person interviews with the identified key target audience to further validate pain points and desirability for change.

July-Aug 2023

Product Strategy & Concept

Established a target persona through the analysis of common pain points and behaviours. Identified relevant product opportunities and selected the most viable product concept to pressure test and validate through additional user research.

Sept-Oct 2021

Product Validation & UX Design

Mapped and designed high level userflows, data flows, and conceptual wireframes for a partner portal concept. Collaborated with the business development team to map out workflows for the product and begin pressure testing.

Nov-Dec 2023

MVP Build With First Customer

Defined core needs for a small MVP to secure a first customer. Put together a 5 screen product concept to pitch to potential customers, along with workflows to bring the business opportunity to life. Finalized design and MVP needs after securing a customer.

Feb-Mar 2024

Securing Additional Customers

Once the build had begun with the first customer, two additional Grain Marketing Advisory companies came on board.

the problem

Growth of the Combyne app was not meeting expected targets, but satisfaction among active users was very high with a rating of 4.3/5

Combyne Goals

Expand the business beyond the consumer product (small TAM of roughly ~300k across North America)

Keep the product affordable for the average farmer (research indicated maximum base subscription of ~$600/yr)

Utilize the B2C product to open up B2B revenue streams through partner relationships

Leverage existing relationships between farmers and trusted advisors to get the B2C product to market by improving farmer to advisor workflows

Go to market plan

Combyne partnered with key ag service providers including grain marketing advisors, crop insurance companies, and accountants, to reach farmers through trusted channels

While crafting our go-to-market strategy, a fascinating trend emerged from the business development team's conversations with agriculture service providers.

Client Data Collection

Service providers were having a hard time acquiring the data they needed from farmers to provide a high-quality of service.

Data Tracking & Entry

They were spending a lot of time compiling and entering data from their customers in various systems, stunting growth.

Client Management Tools

Their current tools were inefficient and disparate, with all advisor segments using 3+ systems to manage client information.

These trends were also supported by a previous research study with ~30 farmers in Western Canada, indicating that the needs correlated with both sides of the market

~90%

of farmers struggle with sharing their marketing data with farm stakeholders and service providers

~75%

of these farmers are the only owner of the data, lacking an efficient way to share it with other stakeholders

Validating the problem

I conducted 15 remote interviews to identify opportunities and challenges in workflows between farmers and their advisors

4 Provincial Crop Insurers

Government regulated organizations that provide crop insurance coverage

Sample Questions

What data do you need to collect from farmers to do your job and how do you acquire it today?
How do you store the data? What tools do you use?
What areas of your workflow with farmers do you spend the most time on? Do you have any particular challenges?

6 Grain Marketing Advisors

Provide crop marketing strategies, plans, and recommendations to their customers

Sample Questions

How do your advisors communicate with farmers? How often? Medium?
What does your process look like when you acquire a new customer?
What are your biggest challenges in providing services to farmers?
What would you like to be doing more of? Less of?

5 Grain Brokers

Brokers match buyers and farmers to facilitate crop sales, with transaction fees

Sample Questions

What kinds of services do you provide your customers?
What tools do you use today?
What data do you need to collect from your customers? Walk us through your process.
What would you like to be doing more of? Less of?

the findings

Analysis of interviews with the 3 partner segments revealed a compelling opportunity with Grain Marketing Advisors.

Faced with the challenge of excessive time spent collecting and entering client data, we identified a need for improved efficiency. Grain Marketing Advisors were using a minimum of 3 tools to manage client information, and 65% had attempted to build their own products to improve workflows, without success.

We have our Farm Management Workbook on Google Sheets, and farmers love how organized it is, but our advisors are the ones filling in the data 90% of the time.

- Grain Marketing Advisor, SK

VALIDATION Research

To pressure test the validity of the business opportunity, I conducted 5 in-person follow-up interviews with Grain Marketing Advisors alongside our CEO

Overview of Services and Company Goals

Sample Questions

What services do you provide your customers?
How would you describe your business? What differentiates you?
What are your main business goals?
Are there any areas of your business or services that you’d like to improve? Which ones? Why?

Tools Used to Facilitate Client Services

Sample Questions

What tools are you using for your business today?
How long have you been using these tools? Have you changed any of your tools in the past few years?
If you could have the perfect tool, what do you envision it being able to do for you? Why? How would this improve your business?

Collecting, Managing, and Entering Data

Sample Questions

What kind of data are you collecting from farmers today?
How are you collecting and recording it? Who accesses it?
What are your biggest challenges?
Walk us through a typical exchange with a customer

key Findings

All 5/5 Grain Marketing Advisors identified consistent pain points in providing services to their clients that were preventing them from achieving their business goals.

Time vs. Growth

Time spent collecting and entering data for their clients is a significant point of friction hindering growth, due to the advisor to client ratio.

Focus on Strategy

Seeking easier collection of data from farmers to improve value of service provided. They want advisors to spend more time on strategy helping farmers meet their goals.

Attempts to Build

Already trying to solve the problem by building their own spreadsheets they couldn’t get customers to use, or hiring development teams to build tools that weren’t stacking up.

Willing to Pay

Advisors were willing to pay for Combyne for their clients because it already had 80% of the data they needed, as well as pay for a tool that would bring all the data together.

The Opportunity

The data that Grain Marketing Advisors needed from their customers was an 80% overlap with the data already existing in farmers’ Combyne accounts when they were active users

Inventory & Sale Progress

This was the most important piece of information for advisors that already existed in Combyne. Advisors need to know the exact amount of inventory a farmer has at harvest, or is projecting to grow, and how much they’ve already sold in order to give useful recommendations.

Contract Details

Advisors need to know the details of farmers sales contracts including which crops have been sold, what volume of each crop has been sold, and for what price and delivery month, in order to help them plan cashflow and incremental sales. Managing contracts was core to the existing product.

Revenue, Cashflow, Costs

Revenue, cash flow, and cost of production are additional data points advisors need from their clients, so they know their farmers break even price, month-to-month cash flow needs, and total revenue to-date. Some aspects of this were not yet in Combyne, hence the missing 20%.

conclusion

Grain Marketing Advisors were spending 25-30% of their time collecting data from farmers in order to provide them tailored recommendations. Farmers were not proactively sending information to their advisors as things changed, and about 60% of their clients weren’t tracking this data at all.

If we could have 30% more efficiency reducing the amount of manual data entry we have to do for even 25 farmers, that would be a huge gain for our business.

- Grain Marketing Advisory, SK

Product Strategy

I identified 3 product opportunities for potential customers based on the research. We chose to focus on the solution for ‘Hands On’ Grain Marketing Advisors, targeting the persona with the highest need for change first.

Unlocking Value for Advisors

The portal would enable advisors to view data that farmers were already entering into Combyne, reducing their data input efforts

Business Model

I worked with the business development team to establish a business model for the new enterprise product based on knowledge of our audiences’ customer base and service fees

Critical Dependency

We discovered that a critical dependency of the portal was that advisors needed to be able to see data from every customer even if that customer was not keeping their Combyne account up-to-date. This was also the reason other solutions had failed in the past.

This meant that they needed to be able to add data for their customers from the portal

They also needed to be able to view customer data at an aggregate level as well as individual

They needed a way to bulk upload documents for multiple clients at once and assign after

Experience design

First, I mapped out the experience for ‘Hands On’ Marketing Advisors to access, view, and interact with data from their customers’ Combyne accounts

Product Infrastructure

I worked with our engineering leaders and CEO to ensure the technical infrastructure would maintain a common back-end for all products and services

Product Concept

Next, I put together some high-level concepts highlighting key customer data advisors would be able to manage in the portal

Partners would be able to view total inventory available across all customers as well as individual accounts. They can view, add, or edit documents, send email reminders, and manage their clients access to paid Combyne accounts.

Results

The company was able to confidently pitch the business opportunity to an enterprise audience before a product was in place, using these concept mockups. This secured customers who would ‘build the product with us’

Keys to Success

In-depth understanding of an ideal target audience allowed bus dev to spend time on the right partners

Thorough knowledge of pain points and workflows enabled the business to empathize with customers

Early, rough prototypes positioned the company to pitch a tangible idea

Final design

I worked with our Product Manager, design and development teams to bring the portal concept to life for our first customers.

dashboard

The team created a dashboard as the home page for the portal, where advisors could find all the data they needed at a glance. This gives them a quick overview of all potential items needing attention.

View aggregate inventory/marketed position of all customers by crop type

Filter view of marketed position by crop year

See all unpriced contracts and open targets for clients up front to know what needs to be actioned on

Filter unpriced contracts and open targets by crop

View all contracts uploaded by advisors or customers through OCR

Review contract uploads to save final data

Crops

The Crops page is designed to give advisors a view of the total crop they have to market across all their clients as well as a view of each individual clients' marketed position.

View marketed position as an aggregate

Change unit of measurement

View total available inventory to market across all clients for a crop

View marketed position for each client

Add advisor notes to each client (not visible to them)

Contracts

The Contracts page is where advisors can view, add, and edit individual contracts for all of their clients. It also serves as a document inbox for contracts uploaded through OCR.

Inbox to view the status of contracts uploaded through OCR

Add a single contract or bulk contracts for multiple clients at once

Filter contracts by crop, status, type, or client

Distinct UI indicating the contract type

UI alert for missing contract details

Clients

The client profile page shows advisors the details of an individual client, allowing them to review their marketing progress, add and view notes, upload and view documents. This gives them the information they need to make marketing recommendations.

View client personal information

View client's marketed position by year

View client's marketed position by crop

View advisor notes added for each client

View contracts contributing to a client's marketed position for each crop

Product concept and validation to enable a B2B revenue stream

Bridging the Gap

From discovery to enterprise in 8 months

I led this 8-month project from discovery research to securing enterprise customers, collaborating closely with a two-person business development team and the CEO

User Research & Discovery

Product Strategy & Concept

Product Validation & UX Design

MVP Build With First Customer

Securing Additional Customers

the problem

Growth of the Combyne app was not meeting expected targets, but satisfaction among active users was very high with a rating of 4.3/5

Combyne Goals

Go to market plan

Combyne partnered with key ag service providers including grain marketing advisors, crop insurance companies, and accountants, to reach farmers through trusted channels

While crafting our go-to-market strategy, a fascinating trend emerged from the business development team's conversations with agriculture service providers.

These trends were also supported by a previous research study with ~30 farmers in Western Canada, indicating that the needs correlated with both sides of the market

~90%

of farmers struggle with sharing their marketing data with farm stakeholders and service providers

~75%

of these farmers are the only owner of the data, lacking an efficient way to share it with other stakeholders

Business opportunity

Validating the problem

I conducted 15 remote interviews to identify opportunities and challenges in workflows between farmers and their advisors

4 Provincial Crop Insurers

6 Grain Marketing Advisors

5 Grain Brokers

To pressure test the validity of the business opportunity, I conducted 5 in-person follow-up interviews with Grain Marketing Advisors alongside our CEO

Overview of Services and Company Goals

Tools Used to Facilitate Client Services

Collecting, Managing, and Entering Data

All 5/5 Grain Marketing Advisors identified consistent pain points in providing services to their clients that were preventing them from achieving their business goals.

Time vs. Growth

Focus on Strategy

Attempts to Build

Willing to Pay

The data that Grain Marketing Advisors needed from their customers was an 80% overlap with the data already existing in farmers’ Combyne accounts when they were active users

Inventory & Sale Progress

Contract Details

Revenue, Cashflow, Costs

Grain Marketing Advisors were spending 25-30% of their time collecting data from farmers in order to provide them tailored recommendations. Farmers were not proactively sending information to their advisors as things changed, and about 60% of their clients weren’t tracking this data at all.

Defining personas

Based on this research, I defined two different types of Grain Marketing Advisors experiencing similar pain points

Product Strategy

I identified 3 product opportunities for potential customers based on the research. We chose to focus on the solution for ‘Hands On’ Grain Marketing Advisors, targeting the persona with the highest need for change first.

Unlocking Value for Advisors

The portal would enable advisors to view data that farmers were already entering into Combyne, reducing their data input efforts

Business Model

I worked with the business development team to establish a business model for the new enterprise product based on knowledge of our audiences’ customer base and service fees

We discovered that a critical dependency of the portal was that advisors needed to be able to see data from every customer even if that customer was not keeping their Combyne account up-to-date. This was also the reason other solutions had failed in the past.

Experience design

First, I mapped out the experience for ‘Hands On’ Marketing Advisors to access, view, and interact with data from their customers’ Combyne accounts

Product Infrastructure

I worked with our engineering leaders and CEO to ensure the technical infrastructure would maintain a common back-end for all products and services

Product Concept

Next, I put together some high-level concepts highlighting key customer data advisors would be able to manage in the portal

Partners would be able to view total inventory available across all customers as well as individual accounts. They can view, add, or edit documents, send email reminders, and manage their clients access to paid Combyne accounts.

The company was able to confidently pitch the business opportunity to an enterprise audience before a product was in place, using these concept mockups. This secured customers who would ‘build the product with us’

Keys to Success

MVP Definition

After securing the first customer, I worked with our product team to lead the development of an MVP. I refined the design of workflows and scoped out first release requirements.

Must Haves

Nice to Haves

Future or Not Needed

Final design

dashboard

The team created a dashboard as the home page for the portal, where advisors could find all the data they needed at a glance. This gives them a quick overview of all potential items needing attention.

Crops

The Crops page is designed to give advisors a view of the total crop they have to market across all their clients as well as a view of each individual clients' marketed position.

Contracts

The Contracts page is where advisors can view, add, and edit individual contracts for all of their clients. It also serves as a document inbox for contracts uploaded through OCR.

Clients

The client profile page shows advisors the details of an individual client, allowing them to review their marketing progress, add and view notes, upload and view documents. This gives them the information they need to make marketing recommendations.

Results

The partner portal is now launched with 3 enterprise customers. This quadrupled the company’s revenue and tripled paid app users within 3 months of acquiring the first customer.

3x

450%

90%

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