Based on findings from the 2019 Precision Farming Dealer Survey, this year shows a four-year low for dealers offering precision service packages to farmers. However, there was a shift on how dealers are billing their support.

Charging by the hour remained the most popular method, but only half of respondents preferred it over other options. For example, annual contracts are on the rise as the primary method for billing precision services, from just under thirteen percent in 2018 to more than twenty percent this year.

Charging per-acre for services ranked at fourteen percent, with another fourteen percent of dealers saying they don’t bill for precision services at all, the highest number in four years. Several dealers cited gaining traction with billable service as their primary challenge heading into 2020.

Survey results showed the most common services for dealers to bill for were hardware installation, in-season tech support, and correction signal subscriptions, with the least common being aerial imagery and analysis, seed and fertilizer recommendations, and custom application.

Dealers included that a key challenge in getting customers to invest has been demonstrating the value of a support plan. Nearly half of dealers showed a fifty-one percent success rate on year-to-year customers renewals.