Building a custom CRM for complex agricultural ordering, pricing, and customer management

Crop Advisors is an independent buying platform for farmers working with independent crop consultants. Based in Medstead, near Alton in Hampshire, the company helps farmers across the South of England with access to group purchasing, independent agronomy, and sourcing of fertiliser, agrochemicals, and seed. 

The business must manage customer records, supplier relationships, products with seasonal pricing, quotes, orders, and exports, with minimal manual processing and reliance on fragmented spreadsheets.

Standard CRMs can manage some of the process, storing names, contact details, and notes, but Crop Advisors needed something better tailored to its own needs. They need a system built for farmers and merchants, dealing with agricultural products, haulage bands and bag sizes, customer preferences, and price changes that fluctuate over the year.

First Option Software was tasked with developing a bespoke CRM and order management system, giving it a centralised platform to manage the entire operation in one place. Rolled out in 2018, First Option continues to evolve the system to meet changing industry and business demands.

The farmers buy seed, fertiliser, crop protection products, and other agricultural inputs. It is vital that Crop Advisors understands who they are, where they are, what they purchase, and the size and setup of their farms. On top of that, they need to know which merchants they prefer, and any unique requirements which might affect pricing and ordering.

On the other hand, there are the merchants. These are the suppliers providing the products, and each can offer multiple different product categories and types. Some supply seed, others fertiliser or agrochemicals, and some provide a mix. The pricing changes based on product, season, customer, and market conditions. 

The product catalogue connects farmers and merchants, and it tends to be considerably more complex than a regular retail product list. A seed order, for example, will often need to account for the merchant, quote time period, bag size and haulage band, order quantity, and various other customer-specific information.

Pricing presents a unique challenge. Merchant pricing changes frequently, and quote data arrives in a variety of formats. Some pricing must be entered manually, whereas others may be imported from CSV files. Some pricing only applies to a specified date range.

 Crop Advisors needed a working commercial system that reflected all of this, while remaining user-friendly and flexible.

First Option Software created a platform that could:

• Manage farmer and customer records in one place
• Track merchants and categories
• Manage merchant-specific pricing, with date ranges
• Support both manual entry and bulk CSV imports for pricing
• Handle order-line modifiers, discounts, haulage bands and bag sizes
• Email orders to customers 
• Export order data for the finance team
• Remain secure, adaptable, and easy to maintain

Rather than be forced into a standard, one-size-fits-all CRM, Crop Advisors needed a tool built around its relationships and workflows, connecting farmers, merchants, products, quotes, and orders.

First Option developed a bespoke CRM and order management system, giving Crop Advisors a clear, structured overview of customers, suppliers, and all commercial activity.

With dedicated areas for farmers, merchants, products, quotes, and orders, each section supports a different aspect of the business. With all the information connected, the team can now manage this complex network in one place.

The farmer section stores customer information, their preferred merchants, key commercial notes, and their farm size and setup. The merchant section has all the supplier information, including categories of products, what they supply, and which customers they usually work with.

The product sections store all the agricultural products sold through the business, including chemicals, seed, and fertilisers.

Finally, the quote and order sections provide the day-to-day interfaces for Crop Advisors to create merchant-specific quotes for products, with defined date ranges. Rather than piecing together pricing from a mix of email threads, spreadsheets, and documents, the system now combines all relevant data into a single ordering process.

In agricultural supply, pricing fluctuates fast. A merchant might offer one price in April, and another in May. Products often have different terms depending on the customer, the product type, and the date. And fertiliser and chemical pricing is regularly exposed to wider market conditions.

With the new platform, Crop Advisors can create quotes with different products, merchants, price lists, and date ranges. For example, if a merchant wants to sell a particular fertiliser at a specific price from mid-June to mid-July, that quote can be added into the system, and used automatically when creating orders.

The system also allows CSV imports from third parties, allowing the Crop Advisors team to import quote data in bulk, rather than entering every price manually. Of course, when required, the team can still manually add quote information, including product, invoice price, net price, dates, and other data.

When creating an order, the user selects the farmer, delivery location, date, payment requirements, and adds any notes. Product lines are then added to the order, with available products and applicable quote information.

The order-line process facilitates the specificity and detail agricultural ordering entails. Users select products, review pricing, choose quantities, apply any modifiers or discounts, and then select bag sizes.

Handover from ordering to finance is a key feature. Once orders are processed, Crop Advisors can export from the order system. These exports are then used by accounting, allowing order data to move efficiently into the company’s finance software.

With the platform, a very complex process is now considerably easier to manage. With farmers managed in one area, merchants in another, and separate sections for products and quotes, users can easily navigate through it, allowing them to move faster and more efficiently.

Over the subsequent years, First Option has continued to support the platform with regular maintenance, security updates, and other improvements. Recent developments have included two-factor authentication, keeping the system secure as needs evolve.