As you know, technology within the Ag Industry has evolved over the past decade, and will continue to evolve for decades to come. One thing that’s been a staple for agribusinesses for decades though, are real-time platforms. These platforms serve as the foundation of workflows for agribusinesses and – believe it or not – many users are still using the same platform that they did a decade ago.

The need for high quality real-time solutions will always be there, but what the platform being used looks like is constantly changing. Based on the new tools, technology, and data that is becoming available as the industry advances, the offerings within these platforms have grown immensely within the past decade.

For example, 67% of respondents from our Cash Grain Workflows survey noted that having historical grain prices in their real-time software is very important, although the vast majority of platforms that they are using today do not equip them with the ability to analyze this data – a full 68% of users either don’t have this data available or don’t know about it.

As the agricultural market becomes increasingly electronified and options for physical execution increase, it’s likely that the ag market will follow the path that other industries have gone down. As a result, progressive and technology driven agribusinesses will likely consider ways to evaluate their trade decisions both on a pre and post-trade basis.

With these strategies, grain buyers and trading houses can make better decisions by basing their quotes around objective fair values for grain in the area. Only one-third of survey respondents indicated that they are benchmarking their trades on a pre-trade basis and nearly 75% stated that they don’t evaluate trades on a post-trade basis – despite nearly 80% of firms saying they mark their physical books to market. This certainly represents an opportunity for data and technology forward organizations.

Our commodity trading platform, cmdtyView is packed with important tools including access to real-time and historical cash prices, grain price assessments, streaming news, global commodity fundamentals, advanced charting, analytics, Excel tools, and much more to power demanding workflows.

Firms that want to be successful will position their merchandisers with the modern platform that’s complete with tools they need in order to make smarter and faster decisions. To learn more about any of our services drop us a line at cmdty@barchart.com or reach out here.