ROI and accuracy in the horti-tech industry

Added on 16 April 2023

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ROI and accuracy in the horti-tech industry

There is an old story about a handyman hired to fix an engine in a factory. The engine was critical to the factory’s output, and when it broke, nobody on site knew how to fix it. Production came to a halt until they got a hold of the handyman who installed it. He came to inspect it, hummed, and hawed for a moment before tapping it with his hammer three times. All of a sudden the machine worked like new again.

The foreman was thrilled and asked the handyman how much the repair would cost. He was taken aback when the handyman explained his fee was $10,000. “How could that be?” he exclaims, “You only tapped the machine with your hammer three times. It took less than a minute!”

“Yes,” the handyman explained, “the tap was worth $1, and knowing where to tap was worth $9,999”.

While this is just a story, it sheds light on how we as growers should be viewing the ROI of insight and actionable intelligence. It’s often difficult to assign an actual monetary value to something as intangible as knowledge.

What is the ROI of getting a cancer diagnosis months in advance? What’s the ROI on the convenience provided by a smartphone? What’s the ROI on knowledge as a whole?

In the greenhouse industry, much of what we do has a tangible ROI. For example, you can pay for X amount of fertilizer, and expect to get Y amount of yield out of it. However, more innovative technology often doesn’t work with such a simple input/output equation.

Instead of growers seeing knowledge-generating technology as something that will directly increase profit, it should be a tool you can use to increase profits yourself. The variable here is how willing you are to trust this technology, and what it is trying to tell you.

With many new technologies, growers act like the foreman of the plant from the parable. However, in this scenario, while the installation of the technology is worth $1, the potential knowledge to be gained is worth $9,999.

Just because something doesn’t outright increase the value of your business overnight, this doesn’t mean it won’t become invaluable to your operation over time.

Another mistake growers make is expecting technology to be 100% accurate, or in other words, perfect. What I would like to put forth is that perfection is impossible to achieve and that we should never sacrifice the opportunity to do something better, because it is not “perfect”.