How Fabi.ai helps uncover insights that drive growth

Summary

Lumo, a precision irrigation technology startup based in Santa Rosa, California, has pioneered smart valve technology that gives specialty crop growers unprecedented visibility into their irrigation systems. Using Fabi.ai's analytics capabilities, Lumo was able to extract powerful insights from their vast irrigation data, identifying critical patterns that would have otherwise gone unnoticed. The result was both operational improvements for Lumo with a 20-50X boost in exploratory data analysis efficiency, and dramatic business impact for their customers leading directly to their largest account expansion discussion to date.

Next generation insights and efficiency in specialty crop irrigation

Lumo focuses on delivering irrigation performance insights  to specialty crop growers through their innovative IoT system. The company developed agriculture's first smart valve - an integrated hardware solution with mechanical components, electronics, and software that allows growers to both control irrigation and collect powerful data about system performance.

Before Lumo, 80-90% of specialty crop growers - including producers of premium wines, peaches, oranges, apples, and almonds - had minimal visibility into their irrigation operations. Decisions were based primarily on physical observation or monitoring plant behavior after irrigation events. Lumo identified this significant gap and created technology that provides real-time accountability into what actually happens during irrigation cycles.

The challenges of managing complex irrigation data

As an IoT company in the agricultural sector, Lumo faces unique data challenges:

• Massive data volume: Each device sends telemetry at least every minute, resulting in thousands of data points across their network of devices
• Critical operational monitoring: Device uptime and battery health in off-grid environments are crucial for maintaining service reliability
• Complex irrigation patterns: Identifying subtle patterns across multiple irrigation blocks that impact crop quality
• Customer education: Translating complex data into actionable insights for growers

Ishan Tikku, Head of Products at Lumo, needed to analyze this data efficiently to drive both product development and customer success. Traditional analytics methods were too slow and laborious to keep pace with the rapid decisions needed in a growing startup environment.

Accelerating battery health analysis with Fabi.ai

One critical area where Fabi.ai transformed Lumo's operations was in device battery health monitoring. Lumo's devices are completely self-sufficient in terms of power, operating off the grid with solar recharging capabilities. Monitoring battery performance through seasonal changes and weather events is essential to prevent device failures.

"It's a really complex query to answer the question of how my devices are trending in terms of battery life in the last week or two," explains Ishan. "In previous roles, I would probably disappear for a week and maybe come back with a 75% confidence answer."

Using Fabi.ai, Ishan was able to:

• Generate immediate insights about battery health across thousands of devices
• Create data visualizations showing performance trends over time
• Identify patterns related to weather events, like drops in battery performance after storms
• Iterate through multiple follow-up questions in minutes instead of days

"The cycle time using Fabi.ai versus the old school way for this analysis was 20-50X faster," notes Ishan. This efficiency allowed Lumo to make intelligent decisions about device battery management that were incorporated into their latest firmware updates.

The operational impact was substantial: "Had we not known that as quickly as we did, it probably would have cost multiple people many hours, if not days, worth of time and effort," says Ishan. By avoiding unnecessary field service visits while ensuring device reliability, Lumo saved significant operational overhead.

The cycle time using Fabi.ai versus the old school way for this analysis was 20-50X faster.

Ishan Tikku

Head of Product @ Lumo

Unlocking enterprise customer value through unique insights

Perhaps the most impressive impact came from Lumo's use of Fabi.ai to analyze customer irrigation data. With over 10,000 executed irrigations and nearly 100 million gallons of water managed, Lumo had accumulated valuable data that could tell powerful stories about irrigation performance.

When preparing for a meeting with one of California's largest specialty growers (operating over 20,000 acres), Ishan used Fabi.ai to create a comprehensive analysis that went far beyond their standard product dashboards.

"What was really cool about using Fabi.ai was that it allowed me to ask a number of really complex questions and iterate on those questions a lot," Ishan explains. The analysis revealed covariance patterns across multiple valves - insights that would have been nearly impossible to spot through traditional analysis methods.

The impact was immediate:

• For the customer: Access to irrigation insights they couldn't get from any other solution, allowing them to understand performance issues they hadn't previously identified
• For Lumo: "From effectively that one conversation, we generated our most meaningful expansion opportunity to date," says Ishan. 

Transforming product development through rapid prototyping

An unexpected benefit of using Fabi.ai was its effectiveness as a rapid prototyping tool for new product features. Previously, Ishan would create low-fidelity prototypes using Google Slides and Google Sheets, but the process was arduous and limited in scope.

With Fabi.ai, the team could:

• Quickly explore multiple data visualization approaches
• Iterate on analysis methods in real-time
• Test different narrative frameworks for explaining insights
• Incorporate immediate feedback from team members and customers

This rapid prototyping capability has directly influenced Lumo's product roadmap, with the insights generated through Fabi.ai becoming the foundation for new product features.

Because it's as simple as just entering a new prompt into the AI Analyst Agent, there's almost no incremental cost of additional brainstorming. That makes the end result so much more dialed-in and higher confidence because you've gone through a number of iterations.

Ishan Tikku

Head of Product @ Lumo

Looking forward: AI-powered proactive insights

Looking to the future, Ishan envisions Fabi.ai evolving beyond reactive analysis to become a proactive monitoring system that observes data and flags insights or warnings proactively.

"I would love to see Fabi as an agent doing exploratory data analysis in the background and then telling me, ‘I know you didn't ask about this, but this is something I just noticed,'" explains Ishan. "To me, that would be a game changer."

For agricultural technology companies like Lumo, where time-sensitive insights can make the difference between crop success and failure, this proactive approach could transform how data drives decision-making for both the company and its customers.

By leveraging Fabi.ai's capabilities, Lumo has not only enhanced its operational efficiency but also strengthened its unique value proposition in the agricultural technology market, demonstrating how advanced analytics can translate directly into better outcomes for specialty crop growers.