The Era of Automation: Why Companies are Optimizing Business Processes

Large and growing businesses, including grain trading companies, are gradually moving away from using Excel in their management processes.

Ukraine is one of the key players in the global grain market. Each year, the volume of grain exports increases, the grain trading market evolves, and the demands on managing this business change.

One of the trends in managing grain trading businesses is automation. The founder and CEO of GrainTrack shared in an article on Liga.net how to properly organize the management of operational activities, keep records using modern technologies, and avoid common mistakes that can be costly for companies.

LESS EXCEL

Until recently, Excel was the primary tool for managing and tracking the operational activities of grain trading companies. Many players in the market still use this program.

However, there is now a clear trend toward moving away from Excel in favor of specialized accounting software. The general trend is: the larger the grain trading company, the less it uses Excel and the more it adopts new technologies.

GrainTrack’s experience clearly illustrates this trend. For a company with up to 10 employees, Excel remains the number one tool for work. Such companies rarely use other tools. When the company grows to 20 employees, Excel is used only in a third of cases, with the remaining share occupied by either proprietary software or ready-made software solutions.

WHAT IS USED TO BUILD BUSINESS PROCESSES?
(According to a GrainTrack survey of grain trading companies of various sizes)

• 55% – ready-made solution
• 20% – Excel, notebook
• 15% – unified solution
• 10% – proprietary software

According to a ComTech Advisory survey, grain traders prefer Excel due to its low cost, simplicity, and ease of use — no special knowledge is required for 80% of operations, making it easy to adapt. This is crucial because, despite operating in the same market, each company’s business processes have their own unique characteristics.

The survey also asked about the challenges grain traders face when working with Excel. The main issues include:

• Different versions of files were used simultaneously by different departments, and no one realized it until it was too late.
• Unclear who edited certain entries in the spreadsheet and when, or whether the information is current, leading to constant clarifications.
• Large amounts of information increase the size and number of Excel files, making them time-consuming to open, view, and edit.
• Inability to flexibly distribute access among users: it’s impossible to hide or allow editing of only certain sections.
• Difficulties in maintaining a history, and inability to retrieve data from previous years — e.g., when searching for deals with specific counterparties.
• Lack of integration with accounting and other software, leading to double data entry and increased risk of errors.

So why are large and growing companies abandoning Excel? The reason is simple — as the company grows, so do its staff and trading volumes. At a certain point, Excel can no longer handle the tasks, making it difficult to coordinate employees’ work. When a grain trader has multiple offices, coordinating managers’ work becomes increasingly challenging, requiring constant conference calls, meetings, and phone calls, which distracts employees and increases the time needed to validate a deal.

As a result, the company loses precious time needed to close a deal at a favorable price. By the time all formalities are met, the market situation may have changed, and the opportunity could be lost. There is a lack of cohesion in supporting all business processes.

DON’T FORGET ABOUT SECURITY:

• Sending data by email risks an error in the recipient’s address, potentially exposing all management records to counterparties.
• Untracked data manipulations in Excel for internal corruption (e.g., backdating a purchase contract to take advantage of lower prices).
• Industrial espionage. Over weeks or months, employees gain access to the data server, making data leaks undetectable and untraceable.
• Use of online tools that could be accessed by hackers through employees’ email accounts, which often have weak passwords or fall victim to social engineering.

Additionally, problems begin to arise with entering large volumes of data into Excel, which becomes difficult to send via email due to heavy files.

Moreover, employees lack a clear sequence of actions for each process — creating a contract, validating it, closing the deal, giving instructions for shipment when the time comes, receiving a vehicle registry, processing it, issuing invoices, etc.

Employees have to make notes in their notebooks and keep many processes in their heads, leading to errors and data duplication. When there are many contracts, employees may forget to issue balance invoices or accidentally issue invoices for the same logistics more than once.

IF NOT EXCEL, THEN WHAT?

Today, companies are addressing the issue of optimizing business process management in different ways. There are various options available on the market. The first option is to develop custom software. This can be done either internally by hiring a team of developers or by outsourcing. Another option for optimizing management and accounting in a grain trading enterprise is to use ready-made products.

All available solutions on the market today can be divided into two groups — unified and specialized.

The advantage of unified solutions is that they are built on a ready-made foundation. They already include the main functionalities, so you don’t need to develop them from scratch. The product is 50-60% suitable for a grain trading company right out of the box, but individual customization is required to make it 100% suitable. The downside is the complexity of adaptation due to the many specific features of the grain trading business in logistics, relationships with counterparties, documentation, and constantly fluctuating commodity prices.

The advantage of specialized solutions is that they are designed for a specific industry, so they fully take into account the business’s unique characteristics. The only drawback of such systems is that they are not available for every industry.

HOW TO INTEGRATE READY-MADE SOLUTIONS

If a grain trader decides to automate processes with a ready-made solution, they should be prepared for inevitable time and financial costs during the transition to the new system.

There may also be resistance from staff, who may initially oppose the implementation of new technologies. This issue can be resolved in various ways: either by making a firm management decision or by motivating employees.

The new system should be implemented gradually. For each employee, it’s important to identify the benefits they will gain. For example, if a logistician spends a lot of time daily processing the vehicle registry, showing them how this can be done in 10 minutes will motivate them to use the system.

Implementation should start with a small scope of business processes. Every company has its own chain of processes, from compliance to reporting, so it’s unnecessary to try to cover everything at once. Start with one department, then move to the second, third, and only then integrate them with each other. Once users become familiar with the system, the company can fully transition to the new product.