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Grain Price Texting Service (GPTS)

Prepared By
Curtis Dunnington
Caitlin Gobert
Brady Heatcoat
Chris Thorson

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Executive Summary
Introduction
Grain Price Texting Service (GPTS) is currently not an established company. GPTS will be based out of Saskatchewan and will be run out of the owner’s home. The idea of the company is to have farmers sign up to receive text messages for the grain or commodity cash prices in their local area at the local area delivery points. The text messages would be sent out on a daily basis at a specified time. The idea is to have the farmers sign up and have GPTS send out the text messages to the farmers and they will be charged a monthly fee for the text messaging service.

Industry Overview
Currently in Canada, there are no other companies with a business like GPTS. However, the agricultural information services industry over the past several years have been increasingly leaning towards the use of mobile applications. Currently, farmers can sign up with Farms.com to receive text messages of the futures grain prices, but not the cash prices for the elevators in their local area.

Operations Plan
ABC company, based out of the United States, will set up a database program that will store the farmer’s information, such as cell phone number, elevator location and commodity prices that they wish to receive. As well, the daily commodity prices will be input into the program that will then send out the text messages to the corresponding farmers. ABC will also set up and host a website for GPTS, which will have an online application where the farmer’s can sign up for the service.

Human Resources Plan
The company will not require a huge staff, and currently will only require one part time employee and one full time employee. The owner and his wife will be the key employees, with the possibility of hiring a third person if needed. The roles of the owner and his wife will be to make sure that the daily commodity prices are received from the local elevators and then entered into the database before the cutoff time each day.