Agri-input channel management is software that tracks how seed, fertiliser and crop-protection chemicals are sold, from the maker to the distributor to the local dealer, and calculates the rebates that the maker pays back along that chain. Agricultural inputs, or agri-inputs, are the things a farmer buys to grow a crop. Crop protection means the chemicals that kill pests, weeds and plant diseases. The software's buyers are large seed and crop-protection companies.
A maker of seed or weedkiller rarely sells to farmers directly. It sells to distributors, who sell to thousands of local dealers, who sell to farmers. To sell more, the maker runs programmes along this chain. The most common is a rebate: money paid back to a distributor or a dealer for selling a target amount.
The difficulty is data. The maker knows what it sold to each distributor. It does not automatically know what each dealer sold to farmers. So distributors send sales reports, each in its own format and on its own schedule. The software collects these reports and cleans them. It matches every dealer and every product to one master list, and it removes sales that were reported twice. Only then can it calculate who has earned what.
The main software companies in this field serve makers in the United States, where most of these rebate programmes run. So here is an American example. Take, for example, a crop-protection company that sells a herbicide through 30 distributors to 4,000 farm retailers. Its programme for one season says: a retailer that sells 2,000 gallons earns a rebate of $1.50 a gallon, and a retailer that sells 5,000 gallons earns $2.25 a gallon on all of it. In October, the software receives reports from all 30 distributors, about 2,00,000 lines in total. It matches each line to a retailer and a product. It removes 6,000 lines that two distributors had both reported for the same sale. Then it totals the sales for each retailer. One retailer in Iowa sold 5,400 gallons, so it has earned 5,400 × $2.25, which is $12,150.
The software sends each retailer's rebate to the maker's enterprise resource planning (ERP) system, which pays it. It sends each region's totals to incentive compensation management software, which works out the commission of the maker's own sales staff. Supply-chain planning software uses the same records to decide how much to make next season.
India has the same chain. Seed and pesticide companies sell through distributors to village dealers, and run dealer schemes with rebates and gifts for reaching targets. Many Indian companies still track these schemes in spreadsheets and dealer apps.
Two newer uses are growing. Companies that pay farmers for soil carbon credits need to know which products each farm used. And precision spraying may change what dealers sell, because a farmer who sprays only the weeds buys less chemical.