CoMark Equity Alliance
Customer Stories
Background
CoMark Equity Alliance (CEA) has a broad reach that spans four states with 170+ locations. However, CEA understands that size, and size alone, isn’t the sole driver for staying competitive. With the ever-expanding landscape of technology, CEA was curious about how to continue their focus of being forward-thinking to meet the needs of their member-owners and producers.
The Opportunity
CEA understands the unique opportunities and challenges that grain operations face. How do companies navigate uncharted territories and an ever-changing agriculture landscape? For CEA it began, as it always has, by understanding their customers’ needs and strategizing how to meet them.
Like any forward-thinking business, modern-day grain facilities have strategies to retain team members and efficiently deploy resources. “Keeping these facilities properly invested in to meet and exceed the size, scale, and need of the producer is a worthy challenge,” says Troy Presley, CEA Grain Division Manager. “Producers are getting faster and larger. Having grain facilities keep up with that type of rush is crucial for us to originate grain.”
Lacey Seibert, Former Director of Farm Advisement
“It’s giving our customers more opportunities than they ever could have imagined.”
The Solution
Former Director of Farm Advisement Lacey Siebert says, “By themselves, coops could probably afford either to employ someone or employ the app [customer portal], but for members in the alliance, that cost is spread out.” For Siebert, the customer portal’s presence has provided relief for her team’s resourcing especially as her team works directly with farmers daily. “The app has shifted our team’s time,” says Seibert. “Farmers are not needing us to bring their information to them; they have it at their fingertips. Now the conversation can be more focused on things that will help them manage risk instead of trying to take inventory.”