Tech Talk Series 1 – Transforming Coffee With Technology
Part 1: How Technology Can Transform The Coffee Trade
The COVID-19 pandemic accelerated preexisting issues in the supply chain and brought priorities such as digitization to the foreground. Now, more than ever, businesses want visibility into their multi-tiered supply chain networks. Fragmented supply chains pose the biggest risks to supply chain traceability, leaving important trade data trapped in silos. This along with logistics inefficiencies can inflate supply chain costs up to 40% of the product’s export value, wasting billions of dollars each year.
The industry is facing market pressures on both ends of the supply chain for a better solution, intensifying the need for agribusinesses to shift their focus online. McKinsey & Company reports that about 65% of business-to-business (B2B) companies across sectors are fully transacting online in 2022. Can the agriculture industry take advantage of this global transition towards digital commerce? We think so.
CropConex is a supply chain management software that streamlines the sales and exports of specialty crops. We offer a technology-driven marketplace that creates hundreds of data-driven connections across the supply chain to help suppliers, buyers, and logistics service providers efficiently transact.
In a sector dominated by smallholder farming, fragmented supply chains, and weak market linkages, we’re offering an end-to-end solution that digitizes operations across the entire ecosystem. We increase supply chain participation through SMS integrations, mobile-friendly designs, and an easy-to-use web application. Now, as coffee moves across the supply chain each party in the chain uploads their own layer of transactional data to the platform, important trade data is shared securely amongst trade partners, and end-to-end traceability is built collaboratively.
With the rise of technology in the modern era, we are only scratching the surface of how digitizing the coffee industry can increase efficiency and profits for all stakeholders. With the practice of using technology to grow, process, sell, and deliver coffee we are helping build more sustainable agricultural supply chains worldwide.
