What is Gap Analysis?
Trev’s Gap Analysis tool enables users to quickly identify and drill into the key drivers of productivity variance between farms.
Compare metrics right across the farm system and quickly get an estimate of their relative impact on overall productivity performance (kgMS/ha). The Gap Analysis tool is based on a hierarchy of metrics so Trev users are able to drill down into the detail and identify areas of favourable or unfavourable performance in a few clicks.
How does Gap Analysis work?
Users select a ‘primary’ farm and season, and a ‘comparison’ farm and season to benchmark against. The “gap” in performance between these farms is displayed by horizontal coloured bars. The length of the colour displayed on these bars represent the estimated impact of the gap in a metric to overall productivity (in units of kgMS/ha).
What can I compare?
The beta release of Gap Analysis allows you to compare whole seasons or, in the case of a season in progress, a season-to-date position. This can be:
Two different farms, same season
Two different farms, two different seasons
Same farm, two different seasons
Where is the data pulling from?
Once you’ve made a selection for farms and season, Trev will show you a bit of information about the data that’s being displayed:
The date range; this will typically be from the start of the season up to the date of the latest farm report in your Trev database. You’ll also see in brackets the number of days this equates to - this is useful to understand if:
comparing farms that have a different season start date,
comparing farms that report on a different day of the week,
comparing a full season to a part season,
a farm isn’t up to date with their reports.
The number of reports that have been submitted within that date range. This will also be shown as a percentage of the number of expected reports within that date range. This is useful to be aware of as ‘missing’ or ‘incomplete’ reports may alter the results displayed in the Gap Analysis tool.
Drilling into Gap Analysis metrics
The Gap Analysis tool allows you to click on different metrics and navigate through the metric hierarchy. When you click on a metric Trev will highlight this row and you’ll see its associated parent, child and grandchild metrics.
The vertical lines to the left of the metric names will help identify the parent/child/grandchild relationship between metrics.
What do the coloured bars mean?
This is the crux of the Gap Analysis tool. To put it very simply, the coloured horizontal bars between two metrics show the gap in performance between your ‘primary’ farm and ‘comparison’ farm and how big the impact of that gap is.
Green Bar = favourable performance
Red Bar = unfavourable performance
The length of the colour displayed on the horizontal bar represents the estimated impact of the gap in a metric to overall productivity (in units of kgMS/ha).
When you hover your mouse over the coloured bars a tool tip with more context will display.
What do the graphs show?
The Gap Analysis tool displays a graph at the bottom of the page to illustrate variance across the season for a selected metric.
It is important to note that these charts will display values that represent a cumulative “season-to-date” position which means they may differ from the actual underlying raw data for your farms. For example, the chart for Average Growth represents the cumulative average pasture growth as the season progresses, rather than the ‘spot’ growth rates for a particular week.
What’s next for Gap Analysis?
Trev’s got big things planned for Gap Analysis and in time we’ll be looking to roll out the following:
Multi-farm select to aggregate farms and compare them in groups.
Custom date selection to enable you to compare specific points in historic seasons
Reference datasets, e.g. how does a farm compare to a regional average
Different headline KPIs to complement productivity, such as profitability ($/ha) or sustainability (GHG/ha)