James Swanson’s deep belief in analytics began with a sensor in the back of a truck that was moving seeds from the farm to the processing plant. The idea was simple: Use the data from the sensor to prevent seed loss.
“It was a sensor with a GPS location on it,” says Swanson, CIO and head of digital transformation at Bayer Crop Science. “We could track the truck and put a little model together to see if the truck was getting hot. If so, the grains could get destroyed, so move that truck to the head of the queue before it does.”