CROWN
A secure web platform that turns a grain exporter's spreadsheets into live contract, shipment and balance reports for accounting and owners.
CROWN is a custom platform for a grain exporter. Managers used to keep contracts, shipments and balances in Excel, and accounting and the owners waited for someone to update and send the files. We replaced that with one web application: buyer and seller contracts, a commodity directory, and an analytics dashboard, all fed by the same data and available around the clock - behind a corporate VPN, because the records are trade and financial data.
The Challenge
Grain export runs on contracts on both sides - buyers abroad and sellers at home - and every shipment by land and sea changes quantities and balances on both. The company tracked all of it in spreadsheets. Accounting and the owners only saw the position when a manager updated the files, and the data itself - counterparties, volumes, contract values - is the kind that cannot sit in files passed around by e-mail. The platform had to make current figures available at any hour while keeping them inside a closed perimeter.
What We Did
Put It Behind a VPN
The platform is reachable only through the company's VPN, so authorised staff can work from anywhere while the trade and financial records never sit on the open internet.
Modelled Contracts on Both Sides
Separate modules for buyer and seller contracts track counterparties, contract numbers, commodities, quantities, shipped volumes, free commodities and outstanding balances, updated as shipments are recorded.
Built One Commodity Directory
Buyers, sellers, exporters, commodities, banks and cargos are kept in one directory, so every contract and shipment references the same records instead of free-typed names.
Turned the Spreadsheets Into Reports
The data managers used to type into Excel now goes into structured tables, and the reports accounting and the owners need are produced from it directly, without a manual update step.
Added a Live Dashboard
Total shipped volume, contract and shipment counts, and breakdowns by customer and commodity, for any period - the figures the owners used to ask for by message.
The Outcome
CROWN replaced the spreadsheet routine with a single web application that follows grain from land transport to vessel shipment. Accounting and the owners log in when they need to, review active contracts and commodity balances, and get their reports without waiting for a manager to update a file.
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