I am a small business involved in physical commodity trading internationally.
This involves buying products, mostly FOB ( free on board, which is an incoterm ) from 1 geography, at a defined price, and selling it to cutomers globally on a CFR ( cost and freight ) to port basis using the global container freight market. The inputs for the FOB price would be made by me by port of origin. The inputs for the freight costs would need to be made either by me or by third party companies so may need to be restricted in some way. ( I guess this is to be done via Google Sheets ) Both of these inputs need to be able to be edited frequently ( daily ).
The CRM should be able to send bespoke/customised offers to individual customers, in certain regions in the world, based on information in the CRM ( name of buyer, company name, payment term, currency, product expected margin, finance and insurance cost ). The bespoke offer must include a price which is calculated from combining the inputs of FOB price, the freight , the expected margin and costs including a currency exchange rate drawn from the daily xe.com rate. There could also be a second element of 'freight insurance' but that will come at a later stage as a secondary part of the offer. Each individual offers should have the option to include multiple products which would be customer dependent.
It should be possible to send these bespoke offers both via Email ( a formal offer ) and a much shorter more informal offer via Whatsapp to the customers.
The CRM should also be able to easily issue invoices to customers once a deal is agreed and provide a summary of the deals done each week on a Friday to me so that the payment deadlines can be tracked. It should also automatically send out a reminder to customers of the due date 2 days prior to that date.
The CRM should also be able to track purchases from suppliers, with their FOB or CFR costs and be allocated to sales orders. This allocation would be done either manually or automatically.
I currently run something basic from a spreadsheet but this now needs more integration and to become easier to use. I've shared an example of this spreadsheet.
1. CRM set up and customisation for international trading business. This will include customisation of: - contact management module ( to include all fields required ) - product and pricing module ( allow bespoke offers, similar functionality to the current excel spreadsheet ) - deals module ( to track response to offers made on a weekly basis to customers and track history and sales record ) 2. Invoicing integration with the CRM - set up of invoicing functionality to enable instant invoice generation upon deal closure and connection with a purchase order to track margin from purchase order to sales order. ( this should feed into the customer tracking and performance ) 3. Dashboard and reporting - reports of deals closed weekly - Contains customer information/ overviews including market share, where they are buying from, which products they purchase and which products they produce. - A dashboard to scrape key metrics and display them, including ( Oil price, currencies ( USD/EURO/GBP ) ethylene price, energy prices, showing daily and monthly movements ) 4. Automation and workflows - automated sending of customised offers via email and WhatsApp - payment reminder workflows triggered 2 days before due dates 5. Custom development - for pricing calculation that combines FOB pricing, Freight costs, expected margin and cost - inputs should not be restricted and allow changes to be made - daily currency exchange rate e.g xe.com - Freight Insurance (to come later) This will feed into the automated, bespoke offers to customers. 6. WhatsApp integration 7. LinkedIn integration to gather specific leads and co-ordinate Linekdin outreach
