Changing world cotton production and consumption levels, difficult to predict weather conditions in growing regions, expanded use of new technologies such as GM cotton, fluctuating demand, and rising wage levels makes the world cotton market as volatile as only a commodity market can be.

Physical trading in cotton comes equipped with bales of challenges. Traders have to juggle multiple participants - farmers, ginners, cooperatives,  governmental bodies, etc - all of who play key roles in this business. There’s a need to keep a constant eye on cotton quality as it determines commercial value and price, harvesting and ginning (which again varies from nation to nation and is based on weather and soil conditions) as well as cotton classification, which itself is based on a number of physical standards such as color, leaf, length, miconaire and strength. Cotton pricing itself can be depressed without forewarning on account of myriad factors, including government subsidies, export patterns, harvests, etc. And then there’s bale management - tracking the quality of each bale and applying premium & discounts based on quality delivered adds one more touch of complexity. And finally segregating bales by quality for appropriate M2M valuation and sales adds a high degree of unmanageability to the whole operations.

Given the complex nature of the business, high volume information manageability, automation and visibility become business necessities that would help firms run the complex business in a more efficient manner.  Spreadsheets, as expected, are woefully inadequate and messy, with no access to real time information. What is needed is a powerful transaction management that integrates the whole business and provides strong reporting, analysis and control tools to help run the business in a systematized and smooth manner. Eka is just the platform needed to cotton on to this business in a profitable way. The solution covers the entire lifecycle of both physical and financial contracts, combining front, middle and back office functionality on a modern, web-based technical architecture that ensures continuity, scalability and keep costs under control.