Listening to Customers

COLLABORATIVE DIALOGUE SPURS NEW AGTRAX INNOVATIONS

For 20 years, Equity Exchange has used AgTrax software to manage and track its business operations across 25 grain facilities, 13 retail agronomy centers, 18 24-hour fuel stations, liquid fertilizer blend plants, and a seed and crop protection products warehouse in Perryton,TX.

Shawn Hughes, general manager of Equity Exchange, says AgTrax listens to its customers and provides innovative products based on that input.

Since the company’s founding in 1919, Equity Exchange has grown to include grain and retail locations in Texas, Oklahoma, and Kansas. It handles grain and sells agronomy products such as crop protection products, fertilizer and seed, petroleum, feed, and other livestock products. In addition, it provides field-by-field accounting, satellite imagery, and plant tissue sampling to its 1,500 members.

Switched to AgTrax

Equity Exchange switched to AgTrax software in September 2001, Hughes recalls. “We were using another company’s software, but we needed a general ledger accounting system, and AgTrax provided that for us. We also needed AgTrax software to track our members’ equity and patronage. Those were the two main reasons.”

Equity Exchange uses the following AgTrax software:

• TraxView is a fully-integrated, comprehensive accounting software package.
• OnlineAccess gives Equity Exchange’s customers a secure portal they
  can use to review their accounts.
• ODBC provides Equity Exchange’s employees with custom-designed reports gleaned from AgTrax with Microsoft Excel, Word, or Crystal Reports. SQL replication is a new product Equity Exchange began using in July to enhance internal reporting by allowing the copying of data to another data set. “It’s amazing how much that helps us,” Hughes states.
• AgWorks is used by Equity Exchange for all of its agronomic field work, field mapping, and fertilizer blending.

AgTrax listens to its customers, Hughes adds, and develops innovations such as its API integration program. “They’ve been really good to work with over the years,” he notes. “They always respond promptly.”

Equity Exchange is part of the Comark Equity Alliance (CEA), which assists its 29 member coops in grain merchandising, risk management, logistics, grain accounting, as well as with origination consulting of farmer-members in Texas, Oklahoma, Kansas, and Nebraska.

Alan Woodard, CEO of Comark Equity Alliance, says 27 of 29 alliance members use the AgTrax software platform.