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Market+ Merchandise: Two Features to Help Originators Make Better Decisions, Faster

Written by Rodney Connor | March 30, 2023

Grain origination has its highs and lows. On the slow days, the job is looking for opportunities to call on. On the busy days, the opportunities come faster than you can answer the phone. Originators need a way to find more opportunities, faster on those slow days and have quicker conversations with growers ready to sell on the busy days. An end-to-end digital app like Market+ Merchandise can make the origination process more efficient and effective.

The core functionality of our Market+ Merchandise platform is not magic, but it does what you do every day faster, more efficiently, and more completely. It does most of the math for you and empowers you to make better decisions based on the information it gives you. Two powerful engines driving our Merchandise software are the Consolidated Bids and Freight Calculator. Together in one platform, these tools drastically reduce the amount of time it takes to plan for a call with a grower and empower your origination team to be more effective. Let's take a look.

Consolidated Bids
  • A direct connection with hundreds of buyers’ bids that updates every hour, ensuring that you understand what the market is doing.
  • Cleansed data that knows where the facility is located provides clarity around the location of that bid.
  • Bids with different futures reference months are brought back to your bids’ futures reference month for easy comparison.

Freight Calculator

  • This customizable calculator accounts for minimum hauling charges and makes sure the rates match up with the real world.
  • Model visualization makes sure your inputs match up with expectations.
  • Calculations using road miles account for bridges and other landmarks that can greatly affect the distance agricultural products are hauled.

A Powerful Combination

The combination of these services power our Insights page that easily compares delivered values, net of transportation, for any spot on the map. A new or seasoned originator can easily understand what the market looks like from the grower’s point of view to help them make the best marketing decision. The real efficiency happens when that originator hangs up the phone to talk to the next grower. Our Merchandise software instantly updates to show the landscape from that new point of view, including the competition and your facilities, all normalized using your transportation model. The alternative? Scouring websites, google maps, and spreadsheets that are all used to prep for the next call.

While it is still true that posted bids can be less than ideal for an indication of the market, back hauls can allow for cheaper freight rates, and growers can have strong preferences that FOB equivalents do not account for, your origination team already knows that. By allowing Market+ Merchandise to do hours of research in seconds, they have more time to apply their knowledge to ensure your farmer sells the right price to the right location, every time.

See it for yourself. Contact us today to see how Market+ Merchandise can help your origination and merchandising teams make better decisions, faster.

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