What is grain trading software?
Grain trading software is a tool or platform that helps in agricultural merchandising and trading. It enables companies to manage their inventory and thereby mitigate risks, handle accounting, and track inventory regularly. Most importantly, grain trading software helps in trading grain among agricultural stakeholders.
Additionally, grain trading software helps businesses manage and update their stocks regularly so they never face a shortage of materials. It equips businesses with a complete cloud-based technology to digitize the grain inventory management and trading system. From planning your inventory to flagging unavailability or shortage of grains, grain trading software helps you with everything.
Most importantly, grain trading software helps you handle the logistics part of your business by helping you partner with safe and secure logistic partners to transfer grains to delivery locations. Once an order is completed, grain trading software also helps you with settlements i.e. payment against the grains sold.
What is an ideal grain trading software?
Grain trading, as an activity, has existed since times unknown. The challenges of grain trading were different back then, ranging from shipwrecks to pirate invasions. However, in modern times, with most activities of grain trade being digitized, the challenges that lie for grain traders are essentially profit maximization and risk mitigation.
As long as your grain trading software enables you to handle the various significant aspects of your business smoothly, you can rest assured that you will be able to resolve most of your grain trading issues. Here are some features to help you identify an ideal grain trading software:
Real-time visibility: An ideal grain trading software enables businesses to evaluate their position in terms of their inventory management. It helps them understand the status of different materials in their stock in real-time so businesses never undergo a shortage of materials. This ensures they always have grains in stock to sell to potential buyers and maximize their profit.
Inventory management: Grain trading software helps businesses manage and run their inventory smoothly.
Risk mitigation: Grain trading software helps businesses be up-to-date on grain prices which can often fluctuate. This ensures that businesses are aware of the ongoing rates and they sell accordingly, without over-charging or under-charging their buyers. Trading of grain commodities involves certain other risks as well which are related to logistics and transportation of goods. However, effective grain trading software helps you mitigate and manage these risks.
Consideration of geographical conditions: Geographical conditions are a major factor in the production of grain. Grain trading software helps you get detailed reports on weather conditions, soil health, and topography. This information helps you assess which grains are ideal to grow on your farm and plan your farming schedule accordingly. Such detailed insights help you make the right decisions about grain products, thus avoiding wastage.
Execution of trade: Because of its end-to-end tracking system, grain trading software is particularly helpful in executing grain trade efficiently. From producing the right grains, to marketing them to potential buyers and target customers, to delivering the products to their destinations and doing settlements; a grain trading software allows you to do it all.
Finance automation: Finances are the most important part of any business. This is what helps you gauge how your business is doing and what areas you need to focus on to enhance it further. Grain trading software helps you automate your finances so you can avoid manual entry of data and reduce errors. It helps you raise purchase orders and invoices, get them approved, and also get payments settled in no time.
Hence, grain trading software has long-standing benefits for your business that you need to consider while implementing a system for your business.
Unique features of grain trading software
Grain trading software is the ideal solution to take care of all your grain needs, right from manufacturing to selling to delivering grains. Because this software enables businesses to mitigate risks, you can ensure that the right products are sold to the right customers and are delivered at the right locations.
Here are some unique features that only grain trading software can offer a business:
Lot number management: Lot numbers are specific numbers assigned to different quantities of grains. This helps businesses identify the varieties of grains that they are dealing with so they can handle orders for these grains and their packing and delivery efficiently. Assignment of lot numbers is usually done right before packaging.
Receivables management: Grain trading software usually helps in automating the process of delivering goods and then receiving or collecting payments. With the help of grain trading software, you can keep track of the number of deliveries that have been completed successfully, the number of payments received, number of payments to be received in the future. This helps businesses get a clear list of debtors and thus assess how and who to sell to and when to collect payments.
Production module: Grain trading software helps you manage the production of grains and their sales end-to-end. From determining the crop schedule to production to sales to payment reconciliation; there are myriad steps involved. Grain trading software not only helps you list these steps sequentially but also enables you to track the status of all activities in real time.
Warehouse management: Every grain trading business has one or more warehouses at its disposal. This is done mainly to ensure that all the produce is stocked at the right place under appropriate weather conditions. This helps in keeping the produce fresh, thus preventing wastage completely. Grain trading software helps you assess whether your warehouse has the availability of all materials required to ensure sales happen seamlessly.
Broker and brokerage fees: Every grain trading business relies on a network of brokers who help them connect with potential buyers. As a result, every time a grain trading business finalizes a deal with any buyer that it has got through a broker, it is expected to pay a certain percentage of the deal as a commission to the broker. Hence, grain trading software provides businesses with features that help them upload all their brokers’ details and then manage their payments. Grain trading software helps businesses ensure they do not miss out on any broker payments and avoid any unnecessary delays in business processes.
Payables management: Because grain trading requires hefty capital investments, main grain traders resort to taking loans from banks or creditors. This usually involved the grain trader borrowing a certain amount of money and then returning it with an additional interest amount. The trader is usually expected to return the money in the form of monthly installments. Grain trading software ensures that you can track all your payables in one place and do not default on or miss out on any payments at all.
Hence, these are some unique ways in which grain trading software helps businesses. By now you have understood that if you implement grain trading software for your business, it will help you streamline all your trading processes, handle and manage inventory, and mitigate risks that crop up at any point.
Get started with AgriChain’s grain trading software
AgriChain provides you with a computer solution for handling on-farm as well as off-farm activities end-to-end. It helps you handle production, management of all activities that are part of the production process, and finally sell the produced grains to prospective buyers and maximize business profits.
With the rapidly changing times, it is important to ensure that agricultural processes are carried out efficiently. Also, it is important to automate the grain trading process to make it error-free. These are two purposes served very well by grain trading software.
AgriChain’s comprehensive suite of grain inventory management helps you avoid the unavailability of materials and empowers all stakeholders within the grain trading industry. Some of the stakeholders of the agricultural industry who can benefit easily from the usage of grain trading software are farmers, traders, retailers, and so on.
Our grain inventory software is an initiative towards intertwining technology and agriculture or grain trading per se. Our grain trading software brings technology and efficiency to every step of the process of grain management and trading.
Here are some key benefits that we offer businesses with our grain trading software:
- Security and safety of data usage
- Enhance productivity and effectiveness of business
- Improve your bottom line
- Ensure timely payouts
- Receive payables on time from customers
- Cost optimization and profit maximization
Now that you know the multiple ways in which grain trading software helps you, it is important to know how AgriChain’s grain trading inventory helps you reach your business goals:
User-friendly interface: AgriChain’s grain trading software has an easy-to-use interface that allows you to get savvy with it in no time. Also, if you implement AgriChain’s grain trading software, you can train your team to use it almost immediately and then get started. It also helps in reducing the time taken to onboard your complete team.
Effective production and distribution: AgriChain’s grain trading software helps you understand the weather conditions of the area where your business and farm are located. This, in turn, helps you understand what kind of crops or grains you can grow on your farm to ensure maximum productivity. Once the production season is over, it further helps you collect and stock the produce safely in the warehouse. Here again, a process of lot numbering happens. Finally, the business sells the grains to potential buyers. AgriChain’s grain trading software helps you make each of these processes exceptionally efficient, especially the process of production which is full of risk.
End-to-end inventory management: AgriChain’s grain trading software also helps you keep track of every product that you keep in your inventory. It also helps you track what materials your business might fall short of and flag them to you. This helps you to know about the shortage of raw materials in advance so you can plan and re-stock on time and avoid loss of business days.
Effective contract management: Being in the grain trading industry means you have to deal with different stakeholders in the industry. BE it logistics partners brokers or suppliers, it is essential to maintain good relationships. The start of such business relationships is usually contract building. Our grain trading software helps you build contracts with business partners without missing out on any important clauses. This also ensures that minimal human intervention is needed in the process as it is mostly automated. This eventually helps save time, cost, and human effort.
FAQs on Grain Trading Software
What is grain trading software?
Grain trading software is a computer solution that helps you handle the grain trading process in a comprehensive manner as it enables automation of most steps of the process. It also helps in making your grain trading process efficient and error-free.
How does grain trading software help in mitigating risk?
In an industry like grain trading, there are various risks like fluctuation in grain prices, over or under-exploitation of buyers by some businesses to shoot up their sales, the effect of equation with brokers on sales, and so on. These risks can be mitigated with grain trading software which helps us get real-time visibility of market prices of different types of grain. It also helps you get an entire list of the brokers you are connected to along with all their details. This helps you ensure that you pay them on time and also keep in touch even during the off-season.
What are the main benefits of using grain trading software?
The main benefits of using grain trading software are:
- Risk Management
- Quicker decision-making
- Streamlined processes
- Compliance aidance
What activities can be managed using grain trading software?
Different activities that a business can manage using grain trading software are:
- Inventory management
- Contract building
- Production management
- Warehouse management
- Payouts and receivables tracking and many other activities are part of the grain trading process.
Are there some specific grains only that can be managed using grain trading software?
No, there is no specificity of what grain trading can be handled on grain trading software. Most grains’ trading processes can be handled on this software, as long as you know the priorities for your business. Also, you need to have a detailed idea about the grain you wish to produce and then implement a grain trading software. You can then gauge whether these chosen grains will be supported by the climatic conditions of the area and then develop a grain schedule accordingly. You can also plan other parts of the process according to the grain schedule you develop.
What are the main uses of AgriChain?
The main use of AgriChain is to manage and streamline the agricultural supply chain by providing a platform for tracking the origin and movement. It supports well-established agricultural supply chains with a dynamic and seamless management software solution
Do I need grain trading software for my business?
If you are an agriculture-focused business and you wish to automate your grain trading process, then you should choose a grain trading software. It comes at a reasonable cost and can be implemented in no time. What’s important is to first determine your business priorities and then look out for available options in the market. You can also avail of trail periods for certain grain trading software options. This is a wise thing to do as it helps you make an informed decision.
Are grain trading software expensive?
No, grain trading software is not very expensive. On the contrary, if you look at the innumerable benefits the offer for your business, the cost incurred to implement the software will seem like a meager expense. However, in turn, this software makes your life very easy by handling most of the tasks for you and giving you real-time visibility of production.
Will I be able to get a trial period for the grain trading software that I like?
In most cases, you will be offered a trial period by the grain trading software company so you can understand whether you and your team are comfortable using it. However, you can always request for trial period citing pragmatic reasons like checking your team’s comfort level with the software, evaluating the kind of data that you can obtain from it, and so on.
How many options of grain trading software are there in the market?
There are many options for grain trading software that exist in the market. One of them happens to be AgriChain. For more options, you can always ask business colleagues for recommendations or look up some options online.
