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-: Hi, I'm Jonathan Van Wyck,
a managing director and partner with BCG.
I'm here with Matt Percy,
vice president of business transformation at John Deere.
Matt, thanks for being here today.
I'm excited to talk to you
about the smart industrial strategy
that John Deere is embarking on,
and specifically Solutions as a Service.
-: For nearly 200 years,
customers have been at the core of everything that we do,
and we see Solutions as a Service
as a way to generate more value for customers
and more value for the world.
Our ambition is to see Solutions as a Service
and recurring revenue become
around 10% of our revenues by 2030.
Farming, construction, forestry are all going
through a huge shift.
We're starting to see machines become more precise,
more powered by software,
and in the process of that, being better able
to significantly increase value for our customers.
We have a product called See & Spray,
which we can tell the difference
between a crop and a weed in real time,
apply herbicide to the weed, but not to the crop,
which is great for a couple of reasons.
One, it means you're using less herbicide as a farmer,
which means you're saving money.
Your job becomes easier and more profitable.
Second thing, you're greatly reducing
the amount of chemicals that are ending up
in the soil and in the water and on our food,
which is always beneficial.
-: You joined Deere from a tech background,
and I'm sure there's pretty significant differences
in the history there
and the journey that they've been on from Deere,
but also maybe some similarities.
Can you talk to me about just some observations
from your background in tech as you've joined John Deere?
-: One thing that you learn
a lot in tech and particularly
as you're building subscriptions and services,
is the importance of being relentlessly focused
on customer value,
sort of like extreme customer centricity.
And what's kind of wild about Deere is for nearly 200 years,
customer centricity has been
at the core of almost everything that we do.
I think some of the differences
are just like the sheer amount of infrastructure
that you have to build
to go undertake technological solutions like this.
And that's sort of new for the company
in terms of the scale of it.
So when we think about the e-commerce infrastructure,
the licensing infrastructure
that you need to deliver subscriptions,
the investment that you need to make in customer success
to make sure customers are able to realize
the value of the products that we're selling,
that's all new,
and it's a fun thing to get to build along the way.
-: Let's talk about one part of your business,
the farmer as a customer.
What are some of the unique challenges and opportunities
about bringing solutions
to this type of customer?
-: Yeah, I think that the key
with any type of customer, and farmers in particular,
is you always want to be focused on impact and value.
Unlike in other industries,
you've got these such short windows, right?
So at harvest, you get a couple of weeks
to make sure that all of your crops are harvested.
You know, for us, just making sure
that our products are reliable,
the software works that's governing them,
and, basically, when something goes wrong,
we're able to quickly fix it so that you don't miss a beat.
And they should be able to choose
whether they want to be able to use it
or whether they want to turn it off.
We also want them to be able
to get more value out of their equipment, right?
So we're very focused
on building out an upgrades business
that allows our new technology
to be mounted to existing sprayers or equipment
that farmers have so that they can enjoy
the benefits of autonomy and automation
and our Sense & Act technologies.
And the last piece is just really
the relentless focus
on getting better over time,
which means you've got to be looking
at how your products are working,
you've got to be actively seeking out feedback,
and really pushing yourself to make things better.
What makes you excited for the future with John Deere?
It's amazing to work on products that create a lot of value,
but it's even more wild to be able to do that
and make the world a better place.
The fact that we have
incredible machines
that are powered by amazing software
that can tell the difference
between a crop and a weed,
or nurture each plant individually
to create more savings for customers
and higher yields and more value for the world, ultimately,
that's just like a crazily awesome product opportunity.
And it's pretty inspiring
to have the chance to work on every day.
What you get to work on is making
the world a more sustainable place for future generations.
And in addition to creating
a lot of shareholder value,
we're a U.S. company that's nearly 200 years old doing this,
you know, in one of these spaces
that's so critical to the world.
When you think about our food supply
and our growing population over the next 30 years,
it's awesome to be able to be a part of that.
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