What if an origination team could take its contracting process completely online? Manage the entire lifecycle of its cash contracts in a digital experience? With advanced analytics built in to make the right business decisions easier to discover and act on?
We started with these questions when building Market+ Merchandise, the foundational tool in the Market+ application. Merchandise enables merchandisers and originators to streamline their work and capture more profitable outcomes with their farmer customers, and we are excited to announce it has been officially released.We first focused on digitizing the key steps in the cash crop transaction flow for the benefit of all parties involved. From there, we continued iterating on the experience of Merchandise with the most-requested features from our partner merchants, originators, advisors, farmers, and co-ops. We are excited to introduce three features that will dramatically benefit crop buyers.
Farmers want to do business with the buyers they trust. That’s why Indigo gives buyers their own private, branded storefront for their customers to explore and transact within. Merchandise becomes an extension of your business and brand, rather than a new farmer experience with an unfamiliar entity. The farmer always knows who is on the other side of the contract.
Right from their phone, tablet, or computer, farmers see a bid sheet customized to their locations. They can easily sort bids in a buyer’s storefront based on crop type, facility location, price, and futures month. Updated buyer’s bids are instantly available to farmers, ensuring they always see the most up to date prices.
In addition, this is a storefront where the lights are “always on,” since Market+ Sell – the tool farmers use on their side – leverages a live futures feed to show real-time cash, basis, and futures-only contracts that are instantly transactable. There’s no need for the farmer to call the buyer when interested or ready to make a sale, saving both sides time. This is also handy because it allows farmers to review their sales any time of day, whether it’s before the day’s work has begun or after the markets close. It’s never too early or late to start or close a contract.
This part of the product is, of course, table stakes for us. A grain merchandising app wouldn’t be useful if posting bids – and managing the contracts those bids could become – weren’t simple and intuitive. Still, seeing it all come together makes us realize how much time and effort an origination team can save when the entire lifecycle of a cash contract is brought into one place.
Through Merchandise, users can enter, view, manage, sign, and modify contracts within one tool. There’s no need to reconcile decisions between different systems, which allows originators to reduce manual activities and focus on what matters. That includes being on the phone and on the farm talking with producers.
With Market+ Merchandise, users can:
Plus, Merchandise can be set up to automatically hedge positions once a contract is executed. This add-on option – One-Click Auto-Hedge – uses information on your strategies and commodity relationships to balance positions the way you want, immediately and automatically. This helps avoid hedge slippage and prevent data entry mistakes.
Merchandisers shouldn’t have to look in multiple places for the context they need to make a decision. That’s why Merchandise places real-time insights next to a merchant’s most common decision points: to make the path to profitable business clear from the start.
For example, the interface for bid entry and management is right next to the interface for bid strategy. That allows you to adjust and update basis, futures reference month, facility, and delivery window for one or more bids based on how competitive your bids are compared to those of nearby buyers.
There’s even the option to switch on “normalize basis,” which rearranges competitor bids according to a consistent futures reference month. This saves you from running mundane, repetitive, back-of-the-napkin calculations when you’re quickly trying to explain your bid’s competitiveness to a customer.
Expect more analytics to show up throughout the Market+ application in the coming months.
Market+ Merchandise enables origination and merchandising teams to turn an inefficient offline contracting process into a streamlined digital experience. We can’t wait to explore how it can help you meet the needs of your business today and solve even more challenges for you tomorrow.
Disclaimer: Indigo is not and does not represent to be a commodities trading advisor ("CTA"), futures commission merchant ("FCM"), introducing broker ("IB"), commodity pool operator ("CPO"), or swap dealer. Materials provided by Indigo are for informational purposes only, and Indigo does not solicit, advise or guarantee any sale, purchase or trade.