Breaking Down AgVend's Nexus Product Launch and What it Means for Retailers, Distributors and Input Manufacturers
Index:
Overview
Nexus Breakdown
Finance
Procure
Forecast
“Stacking”
Connect
Market
Educate
Future Expansion
Business Models
Control Point Expansion
Catalyst for Attracting Mega-Retailers?
Final Thoughts
Overview
AgVend Unveils Nexus: Ag Retail’s Gateway to a More Connected, Dynamic Supply Chain - AgVend
AgVend, the leading provider of digital enablement solutions for ag retailers, announces the launch of Nexus, a powerful suite of tools designed to place retailers at the center of a fully integrated, digitally connected supply chain. As the connective hub between their customers, distributors, and suppliers, Nexus enables ag retailers to maximize their core AgVend platform by eliminating the need to switch between systems, streamlining manual and complicated workflows, and delivering an exceptional customer experience.
Nexus connects retailers to an expansive ecosystem of complementary tools, services, and integrations with their preferred 3rd party partners,” said Alexander Reichert CEO and Co-Founder at AgVend.
AgVend provides software solutions for agribusinesses to more efficiently operate their organizations and engage with their customers.
Through their white-labeled system of action, more than 28% of North American retailers streamline workflows for field and office staff, and create differentiated experiences for their local farm customers.
The AgVend opportunity extends beyond that, though. AgVend is leaning into that opportunity.
Nexus Breakdown
AgVend has stated an ambition to “Create a more resilient and dynamic agricultural supply chain” and the Nexus suite enables that.
The Nexus product suite includes the following:
Nexus Market: Collaborate to drive grower sales with hyper-focused, multi-channel campaigns.
Nexus Procure: Streamline procurement with online orders, payments, delivery tracking, and centralized billing
Nexus Finance: Embed financing at the point of action to enable easy loan access and utilization.
Nexus Forecast: Improve forecasting logistics and decision-making through real-time inventory sharing and collaborative planning.
Nexus Educate: Centralize digital product assets to equip teams and customers with the most relevant information and data.
Nexus Connect: Enhance data sharing with immediate exchanges to standardize information between parties for seamless insights.
There has already been an unofficial announcement surrounding several of the offerings.
AgVend has partnerships with financial institutions like Compeer and Growers Edge enabling “Finance” to embed financial solutions, or streamlines application workflows for farmers, improving the customer experience and managing the demands on ag retail staff, ultimately leading to increased retailer sales opportunities and faster payment for the retailer. Note: This is a useful video from GreenPoint Ag illustrating the seamlessness of making payments via the platform.
Next, they announced a partnership on “Procure.”
In August, a collaboration between AgVend and CHS was announced to give CHS wholesale crop protection customers “access to place orders, view transaction and invoice history, and to reorder with one easy click within the AgVend platform.”
The benefits for both parties are immediate:
For ag retailers: The ability to readily manage their procurement of crop protection products, which is often fraught with challenges including:
the need of retail personnel to move between softwares to look at product forecasts and then input orders in a different software platform.
There is also a lack of visibility into where a shipment of product is once ordered and when it will be arriving— a key in-season when product application timing can be tight.
Enhanced visibility now gets integrated into the AgVend workflow, which keeps retail staff better informed to communicate with their customers and not miss out on sales opportunities.
For Distributors: One way for a distributor to differentiate themselves is to make themselves easier to do business with— if it is easier for a retailer to know where their order is, or to keep track of invoices and pay them, that can help them become a distributor of preference. Additionally, enhanced connection to their retail customers allows them to work towards better outcomes for their own business; that can be in reduced time to invoice payment, or it can be in terms of a deeper understanding of demand signals, such as through a retail sharing a product forecast with them, better informing their product ordering needs for example.
Scale drives success in ag retail. As consolidation continues at the retail level, that gives retailers more influence with manufacturers along with the ability to spread out fixed costs— like investing in distribution warehousing and personnel to gain more flexibility and control over their procurement efforts, making retail vertical integrating into distribution capabilities a easier decision in the future, with AgVend as a tool to enable.
Consider “Procure” stacked with “Forecast” to enable higher resolution inventory management as a foundation to enabling that.
Software doesn’t enable the delivery of physical goods, but it can improves the efficiency of it.
Pair those two offerings with “Connect” which “standardizes data between parties.” Seemingly, Connect could be for any data sharing, like sharing product complaints more efficiently or sharing PDFs from disparate sources, like crop report PDFs, as talked about in the AgVend announcement with Bayer, or building programs with the distributor.
The biggest take away is that as a retailer stacks Nexus offerings together, the utility of each grows. Worth noting, the retail NEEDS to opt into each of the Nexus suite offerings, they are not forced upon the retailer.
Another Nexus offering that is compelling is “Market,” focused on driving grower sales with precision, multi-channel marketing campaigns.
Precision marketing will become the norm in agriculture within a decade.
In agriculture, precision is a common term used around the application of inputs. However, it can apply to almost every facet of business and agriculture, including marketing.