Customer Relations
Background
Premier Cooperative became a Contango partner earlier this year. Since then, they’ve transformed how they collect and analyze the information needed to make cash market trade decisions. For merchandisers, this means fewer open browser tabs to check cash bids, fewer spreadsheets to maintain, and less time spent doing manual trade calculations. For their team of farm marketers, it means staying in regular, proactive contact with customers and streamlining cross-team communication.
At launch, Doug Cropp, Chief Risk Officer, and Lane Avenatti, Merchandiser, quickly found ways to create efficiencies in their merchandising and farm marketing team’s processes. Six months after coming on board, they’ve shared a bit about how they implemented the platform and found efficiencies on both sides of the trade.
Evaluating more trade options in less time
“It's always your first question when you come in, are we being competitive, how do we make sure we stay relevant in the marketplace? And then, you know, how do we compare?” said Doug.
For Doug, Contango’s expedited how he collects market data and forms an opinion about the cash market. “It's always your first question when you come in, are we being competitive, how do we make sure we stay relevant in the marketplace? And then, you know, how do we compare?” he said. In the past, Doug and Lane maintained a spreadsheet of competitor bids and found 20 or 30 minutes a few times each week to update it with the latest prices. A few months into using Contango, they realized they had stopped updating the spreadsheet all together.
Each hour or on demand, Contango scrapes the most up-to-date cash bids in any given region, packages them in an easy-to-interpret format that includes screenshots of each source so that traders can dig into the details without opening an array of browser tabs. Not only has this tool allowed Doug and Lane to “fire themselves” from manually checking and collecting competitor bids, it's made it easy for them to spot cash market movements in real time and without extra administrative work. Now, Doug and Lane spend a few minutes each morning and throughout the day in Contango checking bids, and the time they used to spend finding and entering basis values can instead be spent evaluating and making trades.
“Every time we get a different bid for a different location, we can access it or enter data for any rail location, and then we can determine the best market for the bushels in our facilities,” said Lane.
With the most accurate and up-to-date cash bids in the system, Doug and Lane can evaluate more scenarios in less time. While Doug and Lane know their typical best markets, Contango makes it easy to explore unconventional trade opportunities without spending hours running the numbers on each possible trade. “Every time we get a different bid for a different location, we can access it or enter data for any rail location, and then we can determine the best market for the bushels in our facilities,” said Lane.
Data-driven farmer outreach
Doug also leads Premier Cooperative’s team of Farm Marketing Specialists, who use Contango to make sure they’re keeping in contact with customers and bringing the right opportunities to farmers at the right time.
Each week, the team prioritizes making and tracking outbound calls so that they’re regularly and intentionally connecting with each of their customers. With their accounting system now integrated with Contango, they can quickly identify when to take action without running complex reports. For example, they can easily see which farmers need to set the basis on an HTA or over-the-counter product, and contact them with a timely recommendation that meets the farmer's goals. When the team is looking to buy grain for JFM delivery, they can build a targeted list of farmers who typically deliver in those months and start forward contracting bushels in advance.
Ahead of the 2025 harvest season, Premier Cooperative's farm marketing specialists used Contango to identify customers who typically deliver a large share of their annual volume in the fall. With a goal to maintain and grow fall receipts, the team contacted each of these customers ahead of harvest. Even though the crop was smaller than the previous year's, the customers who were contacted once ahead of harvest delivered 6% more grain in the fourth quarter than in 2024. When there were two or more touch points with the farmer, farmers sold 14% more grain than in the fourth quarter of the previous year.
How early the farm marketing specialists contacted farmers ahead of harvest also mattered. Farmers who were contacted ahead of October 15th sold 13% more grain in the fourth quarter than in the same period the previous year. When contacted after October 15th, they sold 6% more grain at harvest than in the fourth quarter of 2024.
While the farm marketing specialists have always prioritized outbound calls ahead of harvest, Contango made it easier to identify who to call and gave the team peace of mind that no one was missed as they worked toward, and achieved, their goal to maintain harvest volumes from key customers.
Results and impact
Premier Cooperative’s technology adoption has allow them to save time, reduce administrative tasks, and guide confident decision-making. Doug, Lane, and their team now have the tools to act quickly, monitor more markets, and stay closely connected with their farmers, without tedious data collection and complex reporting. Their implementation of Contango to improve existing processes shows how grain businesses can use technology to create efficiencies on both sides of the trade.
