Riceland Co-Op
CAB Testimonial
Background
Riceland Co-Op is a cooperative known as the world’s largest miller and marketer of rice. Riceland has 24 locations and is based out of Stuttgart, Arkansas. The company started working with Bushel in 2019, and currently utilizes Bushel Trade, Website, and Mobile.
The Opportunity
Riceland struggled with keeping their website up to date and easy to use. Additionally Riceland and Bushel brought new opportunities to one another. With Riceland coming on board, Bushel added rice as a newly supported commodity. Riceland considered a handful of different companies as possible partners to help improve their digital offering to customers, and Bushel stood out because of their knowledge of the agricultural industry as well as the tech industry.
“They understood farming, which was helpful because we never find people who understand,” Brian Smith, manager of software, said.
The Results
In addition to their website, Riceland had also struggled with mailing out contracts.
“We were mailing a ton of stuff and return-mailing a ton of stuff. And with the postal service’s reliability, we may have to mail it twice. We had people driving 20 miles from their farm to sign things. It’s [Bushel eSign] pretty much eliminated all of that because everybody carries a phone with them, and most everybody can write their name on it.“
Free said, now that Riceland has an up-to-date app with e-Sign capabilities to upload contracts into the app. Once uploaded, the customer is able to sign the contract anywhere, at any time through their app on a mobile device.
“The farmers really liked that they had an app where they could see all their information in one spot,” Free said.
Smith says his team has continued to be impressed by how easy it is for farmers to use. Ease of use which contributes to the positive response and successful adoption from Riceland’s growers.
“It’s really self-explanatory. As soon as you open it up, you find what you need to find. It comes real close to satisfying all the questions farmers have.”
– Bill free, Director of farmer relations
