Improved decision-making streamlines operations for PJS Global

Over 15 years old, PJS Global is a commodity trading business with activities that span across manufacturing, trading, distribution, logistics and corporate farming. This diversified business conglomerate manages operations across more than 30 countries in Asia, Middle East, and Africa, with a staff complement of over 500. PJS purchases commodities from the source and then sells these on to different parties down the supply chain. But managing all of these products and transactions across so many geographies proved challenging, particularly because prices vary so much. PJS Global needed a solution that could help them monitor and track transactions being made in different countries and in different currencies, in real time. The company opted to use Robo-Commodity on Dynamics 365 to transform and streamline their business processes. Aided by their support partner, Robosoft Solutions, PJS Global now has a more unified environment, which makes it possible for them access commodity trading data in real time and this, in turn, empowers them to make fast, strategic business decisions. 

Enabling quick decision-making  

In the past, PJS Global were using software designed for small businesses but it didn’t meet their needs, particularly because they had so much data sitting in so many different places. As such, their management accounting team was tasked with gathering and bringing together all of this information so that they could present everything to management. This typically entailed many hours of manual work and, more often than not, the data was inaccurate. Unsurprisingly, management often had to wait a while for the information they needed to assess the organisation’s performance and to take advantage of opportunities.  

To paint a picture of why this way of doing this is so problematic, Rahul Sharma, Accounts Head at PJS Global, cites the buying and selling of raw cashew nuts as a prime example. PJS Global buy cashew nuts from West African markets and then sell the nuts on to buyers in Asian markets. But, in the past, they didn’t have access to real time data so the business didn’t know how much they’d bought and, thus, how much they had to sell. Similarly, they also didn’t know what price had been paid for the cashew nuts, meaning that they were often left guessing how much they needed to sell the nuts for in order to make a profit. All of this made budgeting near impossible because there are often big fluctuations in price between the time when a deal is first created and the time when the deal is actually executed. 

Offering real-time reporting, improved efficiency

Realising that this way of working was not sustainable, PJS Global sat down with the Robosoft team to chat about their challenges and to find a solution to meet their needs. Robososft customised their Robo-Commodity ISV on Microsoft Dynamics 365 specifically for PJS Global’s needs, enabling them to seamlessly combine data from different sources and present a complete picture in real time. Robosoft was an especially good fit for PJS Global because they have experience working with other commodity trading companies, so they understand trading and have experience working with businesses that trade across international market. According to Sharma, they immediately understood PJS Global’s business and what they needed from a solution.  

Robo-Commodity provides PJS Global with a unified business solution, making it possible to track budgets and measure forecasts against actual spending. In addition, they have access to a complete document management system that enables them to keep better track of all deals, purchases, sales and expenses. And all of this is available on a mobile device, so it’s possible for the team to access reports and transaction data from any location. While they’ve deployed the software in a phased approach, there are plans to use the Robo-Commodity built on Dynamics 365 solution across all verticals within the group in the future.  

Transforming operations 

For Sharma, the major benefits have been a rise in data accuracy and in overall efficiency. They have also eliminated the duplication of efforts substantially because the flow of information is so much quicker. All of their decisions are made based on a market moment. With buying happening in one region, selling in another and management sitting in another region entirely, it can be tough for everyone to be on the same page. But with the right solution, and the right partner, it is possible for everyone to make decisions based on the same information. 

“Agricultural prices are very volatile. So you have to be very quick in your decision-making. In the past, our main challenge was that we were not getting the correct information and the timely data we needed from all of our different locations. If we don’t keep track of selling prices at any given time, we don’t know how much we should be paying for the cashew nuts when we buy them. Getting this even slightly wrong can have a big impact on our margins,” concludes Sharma. “Our main objective was to digitise this process to make everything more efficient. Personally, this experience has shown me that if you’ve implemented something correctly and if you’re working on the right platform and with the right team, you really can save so much time and energy.”