Background
The agriculture sector forms the cornerstone of the Indian economy, with more than 50% of the population being engaged in it, either directly or indirectly. The State Agricultural Marketing Boards (SAMB) play a key role in the segment with more than 7,000 Agriculture Produce Market Committee (APMC) markets and many other private markets being governed or supported by them.
Technology plays a crucial role for the SAMBs and the APMCs in ensuring that farmers get real time information and are able to sell their produce, thus maximizing farmer income and reducing loss and wastage.
One of the SAMBs was facing a challenge on account of its digital systems not being able to cope with the needs of ever-growing market. There were multiple standalone systems with no single source of truth of data. Managing and maintaining such systems, along with the ability to get meaningful and actionable insights from it was becoming a humongous task. Primus Partners was engaged by the SAMB to conduct a comprehensive horizon scan and redesign the digital landscape for the organization and prepare a holistic as well as futuristic roadmap for digital journey.
Our Approach
Primus Partners designed a comprehensive digital journey plan for the organization considering the needs of all internal and external stakeholders such as organizational employees, APMC staff, traders and farmers.
Our experts studied the current digital landscape and processes through direct interviews, surveys, workshops, document review, site visits and detailed in-house analysis. The study revealed:
- Duplication of processes and data, leading to delays and overruns
- Multiple independent databases, instead of a single centralized database
- Unavailability of consolidated and updated farmer database, leading to difficulty in predicting the produce and release of payments
- Long reconciliation timelines, leading to delay in payments and frustration of users
- Inadequate grievance redressal mechanism
- Limited scope of data analytics and use of data for decision support
- Inability to use data for predictive analysis for cases like excess production and supply and inadequate supply
- Multiple paper based approvals being in place
Basis the challenges identified and the organizational needs, Primus redesigned the digital journey of the organization basis 4 pillars – accessible, easily understandable, implementable and usable. A fundamental shift in the workflow approach was brought in, resulting in easier access and quicker turnaround.
Keeping in mind the present and future needs, a robust architecture for the digital journey was prepared, which is modular and implementable.
The Benefits
- Direct online payment for farmers
- Availability of real time information to farmers about trade details, price, commodity, resulting in easier decision making for them and enhanced income
- Complete transparency in the auction process at the APMCs
- Real time information for Government regarding price and quantity, thus helping in decision making
- Holistic and complete view of trade and agricultural marketing system in the State
