How Dynamics 365 Business Central Application reduces Commodity Risk Management for a Grain Giant

Client: 

Our client is an American grain trading and agribusiness company with a corporate office in the Midsouth States that provides its procurement, processing, and distribution of grains, oilseeds for food ingredients in Trinidad and Tobago. The Client’s substantial trading activities span both the domestic and international markets, providing a critical service to support the global food supply chain through effective sourcing, risk management, and logistics expertise. 

Challenges 

Transactions in agricultural commodities such as wheat, soya, and corn are more than just about business but a lot if strategy with market intelligence on the backend combined with risk management. And the settlement of tangible amounts of product to the Commodity Exchange hedge position of this very respectable grain company was becoming a more time-consuming and complex necessity.  

Our client was also using several manual tracking systems, holding physical inventory and a hedge spreadsheet separately. This was not integrated, and thus it became almost impossible to realize real-time visibility in the operations of the trading. The process of reconciliation between physical and financial positions was usually time-consuming and delayed, making important decisions and exposing them to finances.  

In addition, the lack of specific risk management tools implied that the teams relied on disjointed sources of data, which preconditions inefficiencies, erroneous data, and higher operational risks. These challenges were not only impacting negatively on profitability as identified by the leadership team, but they were also exposing the company to serious risks in the market. It was evident that a more advanced, integrated method was required to enhance the transparency, accuracy, and responsiveness of all trading practices. 

Solution: 

In order to cope with the issues of commodity trading and risk management, we have developed the Dynamics 365 Business Central Application, which is directly aimed at fulfilling the requirements of Commodity Trading and Risk Management (CTRM). We aimed to develop a centralized and data-driven platform to enable the real-time tracking, overall analytics, and control over all trading operations. This new system enabled the company to have an easy time matching physical inventories of grain with the accompanying hedge positions on different exchanges.  

The inefficiencies of manual tracking were removed by automation of hedge calculations and our data reconciliation process has been highly expedited, and the accuracy has also improved greatly. We also put in place elaborate risk dashboards that provided the decision-makers with unprecedented insights into open positions, market volatility, and exposure. This live data access enabled the stakeholders to make decisions that were informed depending on the prevailing market conditions.  

In addition, the interface of our system into key financial modules provided that trading data was automatically updated with accounting systems and reporting systems.  

This integration has strengthened not only the quality of financial data but also made unnecessary the possibility of duplicating data entry, which improves the flow of work. Having this integrated and holistic system, the company was able to be able to track both its physical and financial status in real-time. Such visibility helped them to address the disparities faster and take proactive and informed decisions using the available information, which eventually optimized their trading activities and risk management strategies. 

Result: 

The transformation was immediate and measurable. The new system brought agility, transparency, and control to every aspect of trading and risk management. 

Conclusion: 

Our client firm to trade more strategically and risk management in the initiative. The cohesive system of carrying out physical as well as financial operations has enabled the company to operate with much confidence and precision. Should you wish to trade in more commodity and risk, with more assurance, we are here to talk to you, and to see how Our Dynamics 365 Business central Application Development will simplify trading business with our CTRM solution. 

Tools Used

Business Central, Commodity Trading and Risk Management (CTRM) Extension, Microsoft Power BI, Power Automate Cloud, Microsoft Azure Cloud