capSpire Blog

Previously, we’ve discussed question 1, question 2, and question 3 that commodity trading and risk management (CTRM) analytics answer.

Question 4: Who are my best customers?

To better focus marketing initiatives and incentive offerings, reduce risks, and increase revenue, you need to identify who your most reliable and profitable customers are.

These customers are the ones who buy from you consistently; give you a good price for your products; take higher volumes, especially when you have an oversupply and need to make room for new inventory; pay on time; carry no accounts receivable (AR) balance; and honor contractual agreements even if the rack price is lower than the price in the contract. They also don’t game you by overpulling or underpulling contracts. These are the customers with whom you want to, ideally, work with exclusively because it means less hassle and more money for you.

And yet, out-of-the-box CTRM systems offer no meaningful way of gleaning this information. You can run credit reports; otherwise, the primary purpose for CTRM systems is to manage commodity transactions across all your locations. You’re left with a large blind spot regarding who you should be targeting to make these transactions.

CTRM analytics help to fill in the knowledge gap by collecting customer data across multiple CTRM systems, including credit, financial/accounting, and pricing systems, and compiling it into a centralized, easy-to-understand dashboard. With this information, you have the capability to dramatically enhance your understanding of customers:

• You can view your top customers based on a variety of parameters, such as ratability, total business across products and locations, and business within individual product categories.
• You can view your top customers within markets and regions.
• You can determine how close customers are to their credit limits to minimize your risks.
• You can identify trends in your customer relationships, such as whether the business is increasing, for a defined time period.
• You can compare your sales prices to those of other sellers at the same locations to help determine whether customers are giving you fair prices for your products.

 

Stay tuned for question 5: How can analytics help me manage my credit risk?

For more information about how capSpire can help you leverage your data to optimize your business operations, please visit www.capspire.com/analytics/ or email info@capspire.com.