Ritzville Warehouse Company
Customer Stories
Background
Ritzville Warehouse Co.(RWC) is a farmer-owned grain cooperative and one of the oldest in Washington, formed in 1893 by a small group of Ritzville-area farmers. Pat Yerxa is a grain merchandiser at Ritzville who also handles internal IT operations. The agribusiness receives about 20 million bushels a year on average, primarily white wheat.
The Opportunity
In 2018, Ritzville was looking for ways to answer the “easy”, frequently asked questions for their customers, such as:
- “How many bushels do I have in my account?
- “What is the price of wheat today?”
- “Where is that scale ticket?”
In addition to being able to provide simple information for customers, Ritzville knew they needed a tool that would be extremely user-friendly. Accessibility and ease was a priority.
The Solution
Yerxa’s search for a digital solution for his operation and customers came to an end when he discovered Bushel’s customer portal. “What Bushel did, compared to other vendors we looked at, was integrate account information and integrate it across multiple entities. Bushel stood out to us pretty dramatically in regards to the most value-added way of answering some of these simple questions so that we’re not consumed with them. Our customers can answer them themselves and get it much more quickly.”
“We do get a pretty good return rate [of signed contracts], but there’s still this unknown factor of did they sign it? Did we get one back? Where is it at? Who’s really kind of keeping track of that? Where in eSign, I mean, we can see when we submitted it for their signature when they signed it, and returned it back to us. I mean, there’s a better auditing trail in that regard for sure.”
The Results
Although Ritzville began their search wanting a tool that could help them answer basic questions from farmers, they found additional value in digitized settlement and ticket information. Now, the elevator can provide farmer-permissioned data to the farmer’s crop insurance provider or accountant much faster. They can also save time by using portal push notifications to send business updates and alerts, instead of making individual phone calls or sending emails.
Additionally, with eSign, contract turnaround time has been reduced from days to minutes. It also provides better transparency to the business in regard to contract status.
Overall, Yerxa said the products and services he gets from Bushel help Ritzville continue to innovate and connect with their growers in new ways. Relationships become stronger and conversations run deeper when farmers can get answers to their transactional questions through the self-service customer portal.