How retailers can improve visibility and bump margins for Ag economy uncertainty
Adrian Kelly
As an Ag retailer, you’ve always kept both eyes toward the bottom line. Every dollar you can add to your margins is music to your ears — and that’s never changed.
Now, attention to profitability is more important than ever. As the Ag economy slows down — and with predictions for future net farm income not exactly optimistic — retailers must be even more militant about protecting every point of margin they can.
These days, it can’t just be about crouching in a defensive position and protecting what you have, though. Retailers also need better ways to accurately, quickly identify opportunities in the market they can take advantage of.
But with the way the Ag retail value chain operates now, there are a few hurdles standing in the way:
Too much manual management
How much time does your team spend each month—or even each day—managing cost lists in spreadsheets? The answer is almost always “too much.”
Spreadsheets can be helpful, but they come with significant limitations. They don’t update automatically, meaning it’s up to your employees to manually input changes, leaving you with outdated cost data that makes it harder to find the lowest net cost for suppliers.
Errors are another major issue. Typos, missed updates, or formula mistakes can create cascading problems—especially during end-of-season reconciliation. These issues don’t just cost you time; they can also undermine confidence in your purchasing decisions. After all, how can you trust the choices you’re making when the data driving them might be wrong?
Lack of program visibility
Just like you need correct data to make informed decisions, you also need program visibility if you hope to track your progress with specific suppliers. Without real-time data about where you stand, you won’t know whether you’re seven sales — or thousands of them — away from hitting your next rebate tier.
When you don’t have that visibility over your program statuses, you don’t have what you need to make timely adjustments in-season. And when you can’t do that, you’re losing margin points.
Leaking margin at the farmgate
Flying blind with your rebate programs isn’t the only way those margin points fly off into the wind. You’re also losing them at the farmgate.
This often happens when your sales team drops pricing below their targets — either because they didn’t know what the right pricing should have been, or because they’ve gotten a little too comfortable with just giving customers what they ask for.
These pricing gaps don’t always feel like a big deal at the moment. But they add up quickly. When company leadership doesn’t have an efficient way of monitoring those gaps, profitability can drop fast.
Lack of insight into individual supplier value
If you had to rank your supplier partners in terms of the value they brought to your bottom line, would you know who tops the list? Would you know who’s at the bottom?
Chances are, if you’re like most retailers in the industry, that picture isn’t clear. When you can’t be sure which partners are providing the most value, it’s tough to figure out which products to prioritize. If you’re getting twice the rebate value from Supplier X, but your sales reps have been prioritizing products from Supplier Y, you’re hurting your bottom line.
Confusion about where to focus energy
It’s not just a lack of visibility about supplier value that’s hurting retailers’ ability to boost profitability. They also often lack info about where the value is coming from within their own company too.
For example, maybe one location or a specific handful of sales reps have been overperforming — or underperforming. Without a 30,000-foot view of those performances, it’s hard to determine where to distribute internal resources, where to offer more training opportunities, or whether to invest more (or less) in certain regions.
Now here: Smartwyre features to help retailers boost profitability in 2025
None of us can control what the overall Ag economy will do next. But at Smartywre, we can at least provide the tools and information to help you navigate that uncertainty, protect your profitability, and ensure your business sticks around for the long haul.
In addition to our costing, selling, earning, and planning solutions, we’ve also added extra features to support retailers:
1. Retail cost lists
Smartwyre’s cost lists give you accurate, real-time costs and make it easy to search and filter for products that meet your needs. Our new retail-focused cost lists are designed specifically with retailers in mind. These enhanced lists provide real-time, side-by-side cost breakdowns that include manufacturer and distributor incentives, giving you the insights that matter most.
Quickly compare suppliers to see which programs align with your business goals and deliver greater profitability. With a clearer view of incentives and net costs, you can make smarter purchasing decisions—faster and with less guesswork.
2. Insights reports for retailers
Better decision-making starts with better data: full stop. With powerful new reporting tools, you’ll finally get access to that information. Reports now available on the Smartwyre platform include:
Rebate opportunities: Better track your organization’s progress toward the next tier. Identify your chances to prioritize the most high-value programs — all with less effort and less manual work from your team.
Supplier analysis: Visualize supplier performance and gain a better understanding of who contributes most to your bottom line, so you can prioritize the most high-impact relationships.
Price performance: Track exactly when your sales team lowers prices below your targets. Enforce a better pricing strategy and stop leaving money on the table.
Trading performance: Identify which locations or sales reps within your company bring the most value to the bottom line. Make more informed decisions about where to invest — or cut your losses in the event of underperformance.
If you want to learn more about how the Smartwyre platform empowers more visibility, better data, and stronger profitability — even in an era of uncertainty — contact the Smartwyre team today.
