Customer Experience Defines Nutrien Digital Scout Powered by Taranis

Experience.

It’s a word you’ll hear Nutrien Sales Manager Brian Essinger use frequently. As a training pillar, Essinger says he cannot stress enough the importance of experience.

“Our role is to create a good experience for our salespeople and our customers. Experience sustains a relationship,” he says. “Experience is critical to success.”

A key component of the experience Essinger and his team provide is efficacy, and in 2023, much of that efficacy has come from a new tool in the Nutrien arsenal of customer solutions. Nutrien Digital Scout pairs Nutrien digital tools, HD populations, nitrogen recommendations, and other key performance indicators with the Taranis AcreForward™ solutions.

Taranis AcreForward, itself, is more than scouting and technology. The tool provides retailers and growers with the full-season story of their fields. High-resolution, leaf-level imagery optimized through dashboard monitoring capabilities and monitored by a dedicated customer success team takes the guesswork out of where problems exist in a field. The insights put information-driven, near real-time decision-making at a retailer and grower’s fingertips.

The combination of the Nutrien insights and AcreForward yields a new and different experience, building what Essinger calls a key advisor relationship for the Nutrien team member.

“It’s more than drone flying. Nutrien Digital Scout is high-resolution imagery analyzed by algorithms that allow you to see things that you’ve done well, things that need to be improved, situations that can be controlled—and delivering the information efficiently and effectively,” says Essinger. “What Nutrien Digital Scout does for us is it helps us create an experience where we become the key influencer. When you use a tool like this, you start sharing risks, challenges, and successes with the grower and that becomes a partnership. It takes what we do to the next level.”

A Value-added Tool

Essinger says that adoption and excitement across Nutrien has led to incredible growth since Nutrien Digital Scout was first implemented in 2022. What’s grown more, he says, is the value the tool is delivering as the Nutrien team becomes better acquainted with it. 

“We’ve got Leads at every location today, and we make sure that our folks are looking at these insights to deliver the best experience possible for the grower,” he says.  “We can take a look at your field, no matter where we are, and have a good way of helping you make a decision.”

Essinger adds that Nutrien Digital Scout is also powerful because of the efficiency it provides—agronomists don’t walk farms the way they used to. The sheer manpower isn’t there to cover the acres that need to be covered, he says. Instead, assessments for the entire farm are made by spot scouting. With Nutrien Digital Scout Powered by Taranis, one agronomist can intimately cover 25,000+ acres, spread across multiple operations. The tool allows agronomists to review near real-time images in a matter of minutes, pick out where they need to do additional scouting to provide in-field truthing and, ultimately, help the grower make timely management decisions.

Delivering Undisputed Value to Growers

“Last year, we had a replant situation that was picked up by Taranis. The farmer was driving by the field every day side dressing and spraying, and thought it looked good. Our Nutrien agronomist reviewed the images and saw that something was off. He ground-truthed the situation, determined that there was an issue, and we were able to beam our HD population recommendation into the farmer’s tractor, and he just drove the tractor. It replanted on its own.” Essinger says. “Every person on that farm would have missed the replant, and that farmer still talks about how we saved that field. That’s how you build relationships.”

Every acre tells a story. Find yours at AcreForward.com.