Clayton Pope Commodities Uses Combyne Copilot to Proactively Manage Clients’ Cash Sales and Brokerage Positions

Categories

• Case Study

The Challenge

• Taylor Pope at Clayton Pope Commodities (CPC) needed a new tool for effectively gathering, managing, and communicating crop marketing & hedging information with farmer clients

• Other software required excessive data entry, lacked precision, and was not optimized for advisory services

The Solution

• CPC began using Combyne Copilot, while their farmer clients started using the Combyne App, allowing collaboration on crop marketing & hedging

• Taylor Pope was a subject matter expert as Combyne built out the ‘Brokerage’ section

The Results

• Taylor, members of the CPC team, and farmer clients can all input data to the Copilot and Combyne App system

• Having up-to-date information about both cash sales and brokerage positions facilitates proactive advisory services

• Automation adds further efficiencies: importing records of futures & options trades and automatically keeping positions updated

• Copilot equips CPC to pursue their goal of supporting farmers in managing ever-increasing volatility and risk

 

“It’s a must-have component of how we operate. This tool allows us to deliver the highest level of service our customers expect. It’s a pivotal part of how we provide exceptional customer service and risk-management capabilities.”

– Taylor Pope
Second Generation Owner, Risk Management Consultant and Commodities Broker
Clayton Pope Commodities

 

About Clayton Pope Commodities

Office Locations: St. Louis, MO; Champaign, IL; Charlotte, NC; West Memphis, AR; Carbondale, IL; Sioux City, IA; Indianapolis, IN

Operation: Risk Management & Marketing Consulting and Commodity Brokerage

Size: Operates in 16 states

Offering both cash grain marketing advising and commodity brokerage services for their farmer clients, Clayton Pope Commodities (CPC) is a longstanding family operation that focuses on managing risk in an increasingly volatile commodities market. Taylor Pope, Clayton Pope, and the whole team at CPC ensure growers have “someone in their corner” to support them in taking on ever-expanding complexity in managing risk, staying organized, and working towards staying profitable.

The Challenge

As a Risk Management Consultant and Broker with CPC, Taylor Pope was facing a challenge. The software platform he had used for advising farmers on marketing & hedging required significant manual data entry, lacked the precision and detailing that CPC’s advisory services necessitate, and was not optimized for advisory services. The platform also looked to be sunsetting.

CPC explored other options but nothing would make the grade. Taylor met with various software development teams to assess building a custom tool, but the results were “not the quality that we would want to put out there for our customers.” Moreover, using spreadsheets was not an option, as that would require manually collecting information from clients, and would entail utilizing PDFs from their brokerage house that are too cumbersome to manage on a trade-by-trade basis.

The Solution

After feeling he had “called everyone in the industry,” Taylor came upon an article in Grainews about Combyne Ag. The article outlined the Combyne App, the farmer-facing grain marketing management tool that can connect to Combyne Copilot, a portal for Grain Marketing Advisors. The platforms sync with each other so that farmers and advisors can easily collaborate on crop marketing and share information regarding marketable crop, contracting, and profitability.

However, CPC has abundant experience not only in cash sales but also in trading. With more and more of their clients looking to use futures and options trades, Taylor decided to start using Copilot while also acting as a subject matter expert for the Combyne team as they built out the ‘Brokerage’ section in Copilot. “Combyne checked all the boxes, and made a lot of promises early in terms of where they wanted the Brokerage section to be. They’ve kept every one of those and it’s rocking and rolling now,” Taylor reports.

The Results

Getting himself and the CPC team running on Copilot was easy and transformative. Various members of the CPC team can upload information for clients. Moreover, Taylor can now easily review commodity and contracting information that farmer clients themselves may enter into their Combyne App accounts – even when in the field. API connections to brokerage accounts to import trade records, along with functionality that automatically keeps positions updated, are automations that add additional efficiencies.

Importantly, having up-to-date information facilitates highly proactive decisions. “It allows us to be in better, more fluid communication with farmers on how they can be managing risk… every week we pull up our clients’ current Basis-Only or Hedge-to-Arrive contracts, and see which customers have open contracts. This allows us to proactively decide what they should be doing with those bushels, and communicate it to them.”

With Copilot allowing advisors to bring cash sales together with brokerage data, Taylor and CPC can most efficiently and effectively offer the holistic services they are known for. “We can give our customers a big picture view of what percentage of their crop is either sold or hedged,” explains Taylor. “Maybe we then tell them it’s a good time to hedge, and we want you to be at that 30% or 40% protected level. We can tie a trade right to a sale, and show the net price.” Copilot has become “a must-have component of how we operate. This tool allows us to deliver the highest level of service our customers expect. It’s a pivotal part of how we provide exceptional customer service and risk-management capabilities.”

What’s Next

With Copilot, Taylor and CPC always have up-to-date information on both physical sales and hedging for each client. This unlocks further capacity for proactive advisory recommendations and decisions, whether for cash grain sales or trades. Ultimately, Combyne Copilot software supports Taylor Pope and CPC in their roles as support for farmers in managing ever-increasing volatility and risk.

 

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