PowerPoint Presentation

[Audio] Welcome to Module 5: Building Your Digital Transformation Roadmap.

[Audio] Welcome to Module 5, Building Your Digital Transformation Roadmap. This is where everything we have covered comes together into something you can actually use. In Module 1, we defined digital transformation precisely, distinguishing it from simple digitisation. In Module 2, we opened the technology toolbox: IoT, data platforms, AI, satellite and drone technologies, robotics, and blockchain. In Module 3, we turned those technologies into business-model logic: product plus service, subscription, platforms, and direct-to-consumer channels. And in Module 4, we tested that logic against real cases from Greece and beyond. Module 5 is deliberately different in structure. Instead of introducing new content, we are going to walk through eight practical steps that turn everything you have learned into a roadmap you can start applying this week. Before we begin, I want you to recall the question I asked you to hold onto at the very start of this seminar: where in your own business could better data, or better digital tools, change what you sell, how you sell it, or who you sell it to? Everything in this module builds toward answering that question concretely, for your own organisation, not in the . Let's build your roadmap..

[Audio] Every roadmap begins with an honest diagnosis of where you actually stand today, not where you would like to be. Go back to the four elements we introduced in Module 1: technology, process, people, and business model. For each one, ask a simple question. What digital tools do we currently use, and how well? Which of our processes still run on habit or paper rather than data? What skills does our team already have, and where are the gaps? And, most importantly, does our business model already reflect any digital capability, or are we still operating exactly as we did before adopting any technology? It also helps to place yourself on the continuum from Module 1: are you still at the digitisation stage, converting records into digital form? At the digitalisation stage, using technology to improve an existing process? Or have you already taken steps toward transformation, where digital capability has started to change what you actually sell? Structured tools can help here. Recent work on digital maturity modelling for small and medium-sized enterprises proposes exactly this kind of staged self-assessment, moving from a maturity diagnosis toward a systematic roadmap (Jeanneret Medina et al., 2024). You do not need a formal, consultant-grade assessment to start. A short, honest team conversation using these four dimensions is often enough to identify where the real gaps are..

[Audio] Now it is time to answer the question I asked you to hold onto since the Opening. Where in your own business could better data, or better digital tools, change what you sell, how you sell it, or who you sell it to? Take a moment and actually write down two or three candidate answers. Use the value-chain map from Module 1 as a prompt: inputs and advisory, on-farm production, post-harvest and logistics, distribution and retail, or the consumer-facing end. Opportunity does not only live in the field. For each candidate, ask two questions. First, how much value would this create for a customer, whether that customer is external or an internal colleague? Second, how feasible is it for you, given your current resources, data, and skills? A large opportunity that requires capabilities you do not have yet is not necessarily wrong, but it may not be where you start. The purpose of this step is not to design a five-year strategy. It is to choose one starting point. Remember Module 3's central lesson: strong business models solve a meaningful problem repeatedly, not once. Pick the opportunity where you can most clearly see that repeated problem, and where you can realistically test a response soon..

[Audio] With a candidate opportunity in hand, we can finally talk about technology, and only now, because Module 3 established the order clearly: customer problem first, technology third. Go back to the technology stack from Module 2: sensing and IoT, data platforms and cloud or edge computing, AI and analytics, satellite and drone technologies, robotics and automation, and blockchain or digital traceability. For your chosen opportunity, ask where it sits in that flow. Do you primarily need to capture new information you do not currently have? Do you need to connect existing information that is currently scattered across paper, spreadsheets, or someone's memory? Do you need analysis to turn information into a recommendation? Do you need automation to act on that recommendation? Or do you need a way to record and share information with a partner, customer, or certifier? Most real opportunities only need one or two of these capabilities to start, not the entire stack. Resist the instinct to adopt the most advanced or fashionable technology available. The businesses in Module 4 that succeeded did not win because they used more technology than their competitors. They won because they matched a specific capability to a specific, well-understood problem..

[Audio] Technology creates a capability. The business model is what turns that capability into value, so this step returns to the four patterns from Module 3. Could you add a service layer to something you already sell, following the product-plus-service pattern? Could you move toward recurring access, in a subscription or data-as-a-service pattern? Does your opportunity involve connecting two groups who need each other, suggesting a platform or marketplace? Or does it involve reaching a customer more directly than you do today? For most small and medium-sized agricultural and agri-food businesses, product-plus-service or a simple subscription tends to be the most accessible starting point, because it builds on a relationship you already have rather than creating an entirely new one. Whichever pattern you lean toward, write one sentence answering the four questions from Module 3: what are we offering, who is it for, how do we deliver it, and how do we earn from it? If you cannot yet write that sentence clearly, that is useful information. It means the business model still needs more thought, before you invest in technology, not after..

[Audio] We introduced this idea at the end of Module 3, and it deserves a concrete place in your roadmap: do not attempt to launch your full business model at once. Define the smallest version of your idea that lets you learn something real. If your opportunity is a digital irrigation advisory service, that might mean offering it to five customers for one growing season, not building a platform for every farm in your network. If it is a traceability-based premium product, it might mean piloting it with one buyer before approaching a whole distribution channel. Before you launch the pilot, write down your hypothesis in one sentence: if we do this, we expect this measurable result. This is the same discipline behind the lean-startup approach to new ventures, which treats every new offering as a set of assumptions to be tested with the smallest possible experiment, rather than a finished plan to be executed (Ries, 2011). Keep the pilot short enough that you get a real answer within weeks or a few months, not years. The purpose is not to prove that your idea was right. It is to find out, as cheaply and quickly as possible, whether it actually is..

[Audio] No roadmap survives contact with reality without the right people and partners behind it, so this step is about resourcing honestly. Start with the skills gap you identified in Step 1. Do you have someone who can interpret data, manage a new digital tool, or hold a conversation with a technology supplier on equal terms? If not, you have essentially three options: train an existing team member, hire the capability, or partner with someone who already has it. Partnering deserves particular attention for smaller organisations, because you rarely need to build every capability in-house. Equipment suppliers, farm-management software providers, cooperatives, agricultural advisory services, and universities can all be partners in a pilot. At the European level, one resource worth knowing about is the network of European Digital Innovation Hubs, or EDIHs. These are one-stop shops that help companies, including agricultural and agri-food SMEs, access technical testing before investing, training and skills development, and advice on financing their digital transformation (European Commission, n.d.). If you are unsure where to find trustworthy, low-risk support for your first pilot, an EDIH in your region, or a similar structure connected to your national innovation ecosystem, is a sensible place to ask..

[Audio] Before you finalise your roadmap, pause and think honestly about what could go wrong, because every case we discussed in Module 4 also carried risk, even where it is not always visible in the success story. The most common risks in digital agriculture projects are not exotic. They are cost overruns, unclear ownership of the data being generated, low adoption by the people expected to actually use the tool day to day, dependence on a single vendor, and a skills gap that was underestimated at the start. Data governance deserves specific attention. Ask, in plain terms, who owns the data your pilot will generate, who else can access it, and whether you could move it to a different provider later if you needed to. The OECD has highlighted unclear and fragmented data governance as a genuine barrier to trust and adoption in agriculture, and it is far easier to address this question before a pilot begins than after (OECD, 2021). Finally, remember that digital transformation is an organisational change, not only a technical one. Involve the people who will actually use the new tool in designing the pilot, not only in receiving it once it is finished. And build a review point into your timeline, a specific date when you will honestly ask whether the pilot is working, rather than assuming it will simply continue..

[Audio] Let's put a timeline around everything we have covered, because a roadmap that lives only in your head rarely survives a busy season. In the first thirty days, complete the diagnosis from Step 1, confirm the opportunity you are targeting, and finalise the design of your small pilot, including your hypothesis and the partners you will need. By sixty days, aim to have the pilot actually running with a defined group of customers or users, even if that group is small. At ninety days, hold a genuine review. Compare the result against the hypothesis you wrote down in Step 5. Did the outcome you measured actually happen? Talk honestly to the customers or colleagues involved. At this point, you have three honest options: continue as planned, adjust the model or the technology and try again, or stop, having learned something valuable at low cost. Only after that evidence exists should you think about scaling, typically over a six- to twelve-month horizon, and only for the parts of the model the pilot actually supports. This phased logic mirrors an approach used at a much larger scale: recent World Bank and Gates Foundation guidance on national digital agriculture roadmaps also sequences diagnostic assessment, prioritisation, vision-setting, roadmap design and implementation planning as iterative, stakeholder-tested phases, precisely because large transformations succeed when broken into sequenced, testable stages rather than attempted all at once (World Bank et al., 2025). One final point: a roadmap is not a document you write once and file away. Treat it as living. Revisit it every few months, update it with what you have learned, and let it evolve as your business and the technology around you both change..

[Audio] Let's consolidate Module 5 before we close the seminar. We walked through eight practical steps: diagnose your starting point honestly, return to the Opening question to identify a real opportunity, match a digital capability to that opportunity rather than starting from the technology, choose a business-model pattern that fits your customer and your organisation, design a small and genuinely testable pilot, line up the resources, skills and partners you will need, anticipate the risks and plan for organisational change, and sequence all of it into a realistic timeline. Notice that none of these eight steps required a large budget or a large organisation to begin. They required honesty about your starting point, discipline about starting small, and a clear connection back to a real customer problem, exactly the discipline we established across Modules 1 through 4. You now have what you need to take the first concrete step this week: writing down your own answer to the Opening question, and beginning Step 1 of your own roadmap. That brings us to the end of Module 5. In the Closing, we will bring the whole seminar together, review the key takeaways, and talk about what comes next..

References. European Commission. (n.d.). European Digital Innovation Hubs (EDIHs). Shaping Europe’s Digital Future. https://digital-strategy.ec.europa.eu/en/activities/edihs Jeanneret Medina, M., De Santo, A., Oswald, P., & Sokhn, M. (2024). Digital business transformation for SMEs: Maturity model for systematic roadmap. In A. Rocha, H. Adeli, G. Dzemyda, F. Moreira, & V. Colla (Eds.), Information Systems and Technologies (WorldCIST 2023) (pp. 229–240). Springer. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-45648-0_23 OECD. (2021). Issues around data governance in the digital transformation of agriculture. OECD Publishing. https://doi.org/10.1787/53ecf2ab-en Ries, E. (2011). The lean startup: How today’s entrepreneurs use continuous innovation to create radically successful businesses. Crown Business. Sun, Y., Miao, Y., Xie, Z., & Wu, R. (2024). Drivers and barriers to digital transformation in agriculture: An evolutionary game analysis based on the experience of China. Agricultural Systems, 221, 104136. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.agsy.2024.104136 World Bank, Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, & Boston Consulting Group. (2025). Digital agriculture roadmap playbook. World Bank. https://documents1.worldbank.org/curated/en/099053025063021993/pdf/P508004-f943a09b-c45f-4c93-b554-9dd1decd1e7c.pdf.

[Audio] Thank you!. thank you!. TALLHEDA has received funding from the European Union's Horizon Europe research and innovation programme under Grant Agreement No. 101136578. Funded by the European Union. Views and opinions expressed are however those of the author(s) only and do not necessarily reflect those of the European Union or the European Research Executive Agency (REA). Neither the European Union nor the granting authority can be held responsible for them..