ESTIMATION OF FARMERS MANAGEMENT NEEDS : TOWARD MULTI-FUNCTION SOFTWARE TITLE. Jerome Steffe

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1 ESTIMATION OF FARMERS MANAGEMENT NEEDS : TOWARD MULTI-FUNCTION SOFTWARE TITLE Jerome Steffe ENITA de Bordeaux 1 cours du général de Gaulle Gradignan cedex France Abstract: This paper describes the state of the art of the French agricultural software market showing that the multitude of programmes available do not meet the demand of end-users. Thereafter, it reports a study carried out at the ENITA de Bordeaux which implicates deeply the end-user in the settingup of a new tool and the aim of which is to produce an integrated product which better meets the demand. Keywords: Farm management, Management Information System 1 Introduction Some ten or fifteen years ago, many people presented the phenomenon of computing as a true revolution in the history of agriculture, comparing it with the introduction of machinery in the sixties. Today, however, computer science no longer appears to hold the promise of a miracle solution for the problems of development or for farm management. Thus, the development of farm management product must evolve to a new stage and take into account the new and specific demand of end-users. 2 State of the art of the French agricultural software market : all programmes are based on a partial Information System. 1.1 a narrow and specialized market A narrow market Today the limits of computer-use are very clear : the market for agricultural software is still quite narrow and it is, above all, organised around the use of accountancy software. The number of computerised farms in France is around and a study carried out by ISAGRI in 1992 showed that ten years from now, the software market probably will not exceed users, with expenditures amounting to less than 70 million francs. This could explain why the market is dominated by agricultural firms. Indeed, this market does not generate enough revenue for big firms to be interested in it. It would be possible, for example, for a non-agricultural firm to sell accounting software ; however, the pay back would be too poor. So the French agricultural software market is dominated a certain number of agricultural firms, whose principal activity revoloves around the agricultural field. This is explained by the very structure of the agricultural sector in France. Additionaly, it must be said that the farmer s job is various. Nowadays, a farmer must have competence in several fields : herd management, crop management, accounting, finance... However, the farmer is not able to master all these fields. He must make some choices. At the introduction of computing in agriculture, some people thought that the use of accounting software would afford First European Conference for Information Technology in Agriculture, Copenhagen, June, 1997

2 accounting competence to the farmer. Now, thinking has changed. Even if some farmers have invested a lot of time in mastering accountancy, the majority uses the computing tool but does not master accounting concepts. This means that the sale of agricultural software does not only mean selling the product : it is always linked to after-sale service. A hot line is essential. In France, most agricultural software products are not sold but rather rented. Each year, the farmer pays an amount of money which includes both software rental and hot line services. Most often, hot line services take up so much time that software companies do not sell their software directly to farmers : they use accounting offices to distribute their products. Thus, the hot line is maintained by these accounting offices. The foregoing explains why the French agricultural market is so narrow. The French agricultural software market remains small and confined to the agricultural field. Specialized products The youthfulness of the market (less than 20 years old) could have explained its narrowness but this does not seem to be the main limiting factor. Indeed, for some years, the market has not been expanding as fast as before. The «boom» in farm computing is now finished and now normal growth rates are now observed. Given this situation, we need, today, to try to identify the reasons for such «disappointing» results. Of course, there are some structural factors which are difficult to change, such as farmers habits, the cost of computers... but to our mind, there is a specific reason which constitutes a limit to market expansion : the specialization of the products. In France, we have, indeed, a considerable of specific products for farmers : for example software for accountancy, another for forecasting, yet another for crop management, for herd management... This situation can be explained by past development of the market. Over the last twenty years, all software developments have been, above all, «ad hoc», in response to a specific management problem. Everyone adopted a sectorial approach in meeting demand. Problems were solved sequentially and each programme was developed independently. In France, the situation is such that we now have more than 250 agricultural software products on the market. Each company has its own specific software but even within a firm, many specific products are found. We will take the case of the main French software developer to illustrate this point. The firm ISAGRI, which is the market leader, has more than twenty-four different software products. The forementioned development was effective in the last decade because there were many specific problems to solve. Specific farm management objectives were taken into account and a specific programme was developed for those objectives. Today, the situation now is quite different. The management field is now well covered and all those specific software products no longer satisfy today's farmers' demands. 1.2 consequences for farmers : the market does not meet their demand Today, the farmer has a wide choice of software products with which he can manage his farm. However this asset is only apparent as his expectations are not met. Indeed, to manage his farm, the farmer must use several different programmes. Of course, with all these different products, he is able to treat all his management problems. But this multitude of programmes leads to new problems which we will classify into two parts. Difficulties in choosing products The first difficulty is evaluating the cost and functions of all the different software products offered in order to choose the one which will best satisfy the farmer. This is not an easy step in so far as there are many similar products on the market and evaluating software is quite complex. If a farmer wants to be sure that the product will meet his demand, he has to study all the details of the product. Moreover, even if the farmer is able to identify what kind of products meet his technical demand, there remains the problem of finances. The pay back on the use of software is very difficult to assess : «we know what we pay but we do not know how much we can earn». So the farmer must establish his priorities in order to choose what products to purchase.

3 A huge waste of time Once the farmer has chosen his products, another problem arises, that is the time he will be able to invest in this software. The more products he has, the more time he will need to spend in learning to use them. This is a crucial point in the case of a farmer who has several activities. Management is only one part of his work and he cannot spend too much time in this field. Additionaly, software products are now so complex that they are really useful only on condition that they are well-mastered. Today,all software requires a long learning period. A second element concerning time is data entry. Most of the time, the farmer has two or three software products on his farm that treat a specific management problem but all of which often use common data. However, the links between these products seldom exist. This means that the farmer is often forced to type the same data twice or thrice! In this case, there is not only a huge waste of time but also another problem : the coherence of data is not ensured. When there is a change on the farm, it is necessary that the farmer update his data. To do that, he must first identify the different locations of the data in question (which software products will have to be changed) and then update them several times. This phase creates a lot of difficulties for the farmer or even the advisor. They both often forget to update all data in all places ; therefore, they have several values for the same information. This is all the more dangerous in that the farmer is persuaded to be working with good updated data. Thus, he may produce false results because of his data. If he does not solve this problem (and this is often the case because the problem is simply invisible!), he can make wrong interpretation and take poor decisions. Face with this increasing gap between supply and demand, we think software development must evolve to a new stage. Methods must change : conception of software must no longer begin starting with an identified management problem but at the start take into account the new and overall endusers demand. 3 What do farmers really want? Toward multi-function software The farmer can not use 100 percent of his time for management : therefore, he wants software offering him an overall response to problems. A study carried out by Taponnier and Desjeux in 1994 showed that, nowadays, farmers want software capable of modelling the whole farm. This means multi-function software as users are no longer ready to waste time. At the end of 1996, a study was carried out at the "ENITA de Bordeaux" to identify what the new needs of the farmers are. This study is continuing in 1997 with the help of four accounting offices. 1.1 the need to implicate the farmer in the conception of the IS. The need to set up a methodology which directly implicates the end-user. As Rivard and Huff, Bailey and Pearson, Ives and Olso showed 1984, the end-users implication was essential to the success of software development. They all argued that the end-users implication presents three kinds of advantages : - economic assets The end-users implication allows for establishing the limits of the projects. It is not seldom that software includes some functions which are useless for the end-user. If we could avoid this pitfall in the conception phase, we could thereafter, save a lot of money by reducing development costs and increase productivity. - technical advantages It seems very obvious to state that the end-users implication will make the software better meet the demand. But there are two kinds of demand : present and future demand. Most often, only the first one is taken into account and sometimes, software is even outdated when users begin to use it because of the long development phase. More generally, the problem of software maintenance and evolution are raised.

4 - sociological advantages When end-users are truely implicated in the project, their level of software acceptance is much better. That is what Robey and Farow showed in Today, this notion of the end-users implication in software development seems to be well accepted by all software developers. In 1995, a study was carried out (L. Agro, A. Cornet and F. Pichault) with 1200 people responsible for a computing department. It showed that 98 percent were in favour of the implication of end-users. But in fact, practices do not reflect this opinion. People responsible for software projects assert that end-users do not know enough about technical aspects (81 %), that their demand are not suited to computing tools (74 %), that their implication costs too much money (68 %) and that it takes too much time (66 %). Moreover, there are several categories of users (those who provide information, those who enter data and those who use information) who have specific demands. Most often, no distinction is made between these categories and this explains why some needs are not taken into account. Methodology used at the "ENITA" in implicating the end-user in the conception of the IS. To try to avoid the pitfalls already mentioned, the "ENITA de Bordeaux" has set up a methodology meant to truly implicate the end-user in the conception of the new IS. Three stages can be identified in this methodology : - identification of all kinds of end-users The "ENITA de Bordeaux" develops Management Information Systems (especially for accounting) aimed at two kinds of users : farmers and accountants. Even if these two categories of people do the same work (they enter farm accountancy data), it is clear that they do not work in the same way and that they have very specific needs. For accountants, a large part of their work is done using the software. On the contrary, farmers do not spend as much time with their software and their technical level is not as high as that of accountants. It is essential to distinguish accountants from farmers because the use of software depends on the organisational and cultural context of the user. The same software will be used differently in an accounting office and on a farm. The farmer wants easy to use and easy to understand software while an accountant accords more importance to the rapidity of data entry. - delimitation of domains The Management Information System, even aimed at a farm, constitutes a very broad notion. It was therefore necessary to divide the study of this system into several sub-domains. First, this made the understanding of the problem easier. Secondly, the study concerned people specialized in one (or two) sub-domain(s). These persons were able to offer more precise and detailed information when questioned about their domain. In our study, we decided to split the MIS into 7 sub-domains : general accountancy, analytic accountancy, analysis of collective data, crop management, animal production management, environmental data, commercial management. Morevoer, we added a last specific domain which was the internal management of an accounting office. These 7 (or 8) domains together form the global IS of a farm. Some links exist domain to domain but there is also a common data bank which is the basis of the global IS. (in this case, the same data will be used in several domains). - implication of each actor in the project In order to implicate all actors : farmers, accountants... the project was divided into 7 stages : 1- preliminary study for each sub-domain This stage was carried out at the "ENITA de Bordeaux". The result is a description of each subdomain (we establish the limits) and a presentation of all treatments which are provided in this domain. For each sub-domain, two documents were produced (a «one page» and a «four page» document). 2- detailed description of each sub-domain By means of interviews with teachers, researchers and some farmers (around 1 hour for each

5 interview), the description of each sub-domain was improved. Documents produced were an improved «four page» presentation, an improved «one page» presentation, a process model, a document explaining each process and a one presenting each real document used in the domain. 3- interviews 50 people were interviewed. We did not choose these people at random. For each sub-domain, we listed from 8 to 10 «specialists». A specialist could be as well a farmer, an accountant, a farm management advisor, or a person working in a public organisation... He needed above all have a special competence in the sub-domain. Each person was interviewed for 3 or 4 hours. The general presentation of their domain (the «four page»), the presentation of the other domains (the «one page») and the guideline for the interview had been sent one week before so that they could prepare the interview. During the interview, the process model was discussed in order to identify missing or problematic processes. In each case, the process concerned was described in detail so that necessary sub-processes or data could be identified. A document for each process was also written, or corrected, or validated. During the discussion, people were interviewed about the other domains (even if they were specialists in only one or two domains, they had ideas concerning other domains). The same method was used. Finally, general questions (EDI, Internet, ergonomy...) were asked for al domains. 4- synthesis of each interview Immediately after each interview, a compilation of all answers was written up in order to improve all documents (process models, process documents...) and the general remarks of each person interviewed were also written up. The compilation and remarks were then sent to each person to be validated. 5- modelling of each sub-domain By means of the interviews and their validation, we were able to correct all process models and documents and to write up a general synthesis. 6- presentation of results to persons interviewed A meeting was organised with all interviewed people (50 % attended) to present and to discuss results. Remarks were taken into account in carrying out the next stage. 7- final modelling of each sub-domain and modelling of the global IS of the farm This stage began in February 1997 and is not yet finished. Its aim is to write the process model and the data model for each sub-domain and to synthesise all these models to produce one unique, general model for the farm. This work is being done at the "ENITA de Bordeaux" and validated by 4 accounting offices : it should take 8 to 10 months. The methodology used is «La méthode Merise», a French method for modelling an Information system. 1.2 results of the study carried out at the "ENITA de Bordeaux". We will not present here the results of each sub-domain (specific innovations for each sub-domain are very interesting but would require too much time to be related) but rather the general conclusions common to all sub-domains. The main issue is that the farmer, as well as the advisor, want on one hand, to save time entering data and on the other hand, to have more and more results. Most of them need, above all, the results provided by the software and they do not care a lot about the means (the process) used to produce these results. This means that these people no longer want to master the entire process (from entering data to the production and interpretation of results). This is a new state of affairs because the development of the French software market has been based on «do it yourself». A lot of farmers have bought a micro-computer and it was thought that using the software in its totality would improve the management level of the farmer. Today, we see that this is not necessary. For some farmers, the level of management is high enough and they do not need to master the entire process of the software to interpret their results. Farmers and advisors want, above all, software which rapidly produces the necessary results, but they are not ready to pay someone to enter data and they want to keep and to master their data.

6 To meet this demand, three kinds of innovation could be developed by software designers : 1 ) technical innovations One must avoid having the farmer waste time in entering data. This could be done by integrating new technics such as scanning and character recognition, or by all other means of automatic entry (E.D.I. could be one). 2 ) design innovations To provide the farmer with multi-function software (which would also be a simplified management tool), it is necessary to think anew the way in which the Information System is defined. One must no longer work on partial Information Systems but on a «global» Information System which would allow for various kinds of treatment of data. It would allow for developing more functions without any data redondance. A truly systemic approach is necessary here in order to meet the new demand of farmers concerning agricultural software. The new Information System should, therefore, be global as concerns the farm (it should include all areas such as herd management, accountancy, commercial management...) and also take into account the environment. This means that the software to be used should be integrated into the agricultural system in general (it should, for example, allow for data exchanges between the farm and accountant offices or banks...). 3 ) market segmentation Once the IS is defined, we must then identify the two kinds of users. Software must include at least two interface : a pedagogical one and a very practical one. Of course, it would be better to combine both but this is seldom possible. Thus, for people who only want to have their results without mastering the entire process of the software, an interface must be conceived in the most practical way. On the other hand, people who still want to master the entire process must be provided with an other interface, more pedagogical, even if this requires a longer time for entry of data. For some people, software is only a tool to produce results. For other people, software must remain a way to improve their management level. 4 Conclusion What we retained from this study is that the complexity of farm management has become greater and greater. Farmers and advisors no longer want several tools to improve their management but a general product which allows for a gain in time and which simplifies their management situation. To meet this new demand, it is necessary to set up an integrated tool based on a truly systemic approach and whose first aim is a gain in time. To ensure the operationality of the product, we must associate end-users with the setting up of the system. Even if this costs a lot of time and money in the first stage of the project, this allows for a reduction of costs during the maintenance phase (which are most often underestimated). 5 References - L. Agro, A. Cornet, F. Pichault «Système d'information : quelle implication pour les utilisateurs?», Revue Française de Gestion, septembre-octobre J.E. Bailey, S.W. Pearson «development of a tool for measuring and analyzing computer user satisfaction», Management science, vol 29, N 5, p , S. Taponier, D. Desjeux «Informatique, décision et marché de l'information en agriculture», L Harmattan, avril Y. Herry «Le marché des progiciels agricoles se porte bien», La France Agricole, 7 mai 1996.