We already know that there is one constant in the energy and commodities market, and that is change – nowadays even more rapid than before. Yet it often takes more dramatic changes, such as the impacts of the COVID-19 crisis, to make it clear that being able to directly adapt is essential. Market participants will have to respond to new economic conditions, competitive pressures, as well as taking advantage of new opportunities. An effective C/ETRM system will help meeting these challenges. Yet to keep the C/ETRM system effective requires adaptability to dynamic business environments: How Adaptable is your C/ETRM system?
Long before the COVID-19 crisis hit, and driven by the digital revolution, forward looking companies were already embarked on transforming to an agile organization and thereby being able to embrace and thrive in a flexible and changing environment. At the same time, they seek a stable foundation while being able to support the dynamic capabilities that can adapt quickly to the new challenges and opportunities.
Engaging with this environment calls for C/ETRM solutions that are highly configurable and must have the ability to rapidly adapt to the demands of new requirements and the evolving business environment.
Configurable
As companies try to differentiate themselves in a competitive market, legacy functionality and technology will impede on the flexibility to implement and change customer-specific strategies. Apart from inadequate functionality to handle the evolving and specific customers’ needs, this also increases Total Cost of Ownership. Unparalleled configurability offers any size company the flexibility to use standard or model highly complex business processes thereby configuring the system fit to the business process for optimal use and adoption by the users. This capability is critical for agile organizations that want to rapidly meet changing market conditions and accelerate new product offerings. Pioneer’s TRMTracker, provides a flexible, hierarchical book structure along with template and formula-based software will support changing business processes while providing a high-degree of user control for less vendor reliance. A system solution that is highly configurable offers the flexibility to be lower cost for the smaller company and minimizes additional cost when ramping up or changing course.
Extendable
The C/ETRM system should be flexible enough to be able to extend system functionality. A legacy system becoming out of date starts with their limitations to data models, business logic, importing data etc. Pioneer’s next generation C/ETRM offers a different approach. This includes providing functionality to customize within the boundaries of the system avoiding impact of software upgrades. Think of user defined fields and user defined tables that can be added to extend data models on deals, counterparties etc, mapping tables to allow users to easily add data such as tariffs or taxes, time series data support, data import/export rules, and innovative reporting including Excel Add-in.
Ease of integration is another area for which legacy C/ETRM are not well equipped. Traders and portfolio managers and their colleagues in risk management, need to have access to have the information about their business at their fingertips. And this information is coming from multiple information sources. The SOA architecture of TRMTracker has embedded middle-ware technology that supports ease-of-integration including market-connections. It provides support for a variety of formats for both inbound and outbound interfaces, from user configurable flat-file methods, to XML, SOAP webservices, FIX APIs, and REST based webservices.
Scalable
For growing businesses, scalability is important. Unless you can predict exactly how large your business will grow and what functionality you will need in the future, you need a C/ETRM system that can scale with you. Scalability is so appealing for growing organizations today, it’s the sole reason many of them choose to adopt cloud-based C/ETRM applications, such as www.trmtracker.com. The enterprise with a flexible and scalable C/ETRM system is the one that can withstand fluctuations in volume without harming its profitability or efficiency levels.
Adaptable
Driven by continuous change, challenges and chances, trading companies are forced to constantly look at automation, optimization, control, and analytics, while lowering their cost of trading. Many of them are held back by under performing software, either disconnected spreadsheets, legacy in-house built systems, or vendor-supplied solutions incapable of adapting to new business processes.
Today’s environment is pressing organizations to become more agile. Forward looking companies are leveraging next-generation solutions to accomplish what their competitors are still doing with inadequate systems that cannot solve their challenges. With Pioneer Solutions, you not only invest in solutions that do what was done before better, faster, easier, and cheaper but also allow to extend and adapt for continued usage and ultimately resulting in a lower total cost of ownership over time.
