Reports EKA – Reimagining Commodity Management (CM) | Page 2

Company Strategy
Eka has consistently portrayed their products as Commodity Management applications, providing coverage from origination, trading, risk
management, operations and analysis for numerous commodities, including energies, ags and metals. With the development and continuing
enrichment of the cloud-based analytics and reporting capabilities, the company has increased their market reach by providing solutions that are
readily adoptable by smaller market firms but provide the breadth of capabilities required by global size companies.
In describing their current strategy, Mr. Garg notes that buyers across any tier of the market can easily acquire and quickly deploy only those
capabilities that they require for their current business – and in doing so, can potentially realize a much quicker return on investment than would be
possible with traditional solutions. Further, as those businesses grow and evolve, customers can add additional functionality and capabilities without
the long lead-times required for the implementation of new systems or custom development of new functionality.
He further notes that with this approach, the company’s customers can also add significant new capabilities to improve their commercial
performance, while leveraging their existing technology investments in ETRM/CTRM/CM solutions (regardless of vendor), internal data sources (other
systems or even spreadsheets), and external sources such as price feeds. He further notes that for those seeking new or replacement core
ETRM/CTRM solutions, the currently available E/CTRM solutions from Eka can be deployed and functionality added via the platform to best match
any customer’s business requirements, eliminating the potential burden of unwanted or unnecessary functionality that may be part of a traditional
monolithic solution. In summary, Mr. Garg notes the following that their buyers are seeking: 1) a solution that can be quickly implemented, 2) will
provide an improved return on investment, and 3) can be extended quickly and with low effort.
He further notes that their strategy, by design, is intended to appeal to buyers in several different situations or use cases across a broad set of
commodities and market tiers:
1. Buyers seeking a new ETRM/CTRM/CM solution
2. Buyers seeking to consolidate data and information from multiple systems, including previously deployed E/CTRM systems
3. Buyers that need to add functionality as their markets continue to evolve, including compliance requirements or enhanced connections to
business partners
4. Buyers seeking to leverage new digital technologies like AI and market collaboration tools.
The breadth and maturity of the Digital CM Cloud offering is evident in browsing the Eka App Store. With apps that cover Eka’s three primary
commodity markets (energies, ags & softs, and metals & concentrates), the company’s offers specific apps that cover functionality within the
following broad categories for each of those markets:
•
Position management and P&L reporting
•
Risk management and risk analytics
•
Trading
•
Supply chain operations and management
•
Finance
Within these categories are numerous specialized capabilities, including market connectivity for price feeds and weather data, margin analysis,
inventory analytics, supply chain analytics, vessel management and optimization and many more. Many of the apps apply specifically to commodity
management capabilities for ags (such as crop disease identification) and food & beverage customers (raw materials procurement), while others
apply to specific energies, such as power (transmission and power ops) or natural gas (complex pricing, physical options). With the Digital CM
Platform, customers can configure their solution with the specific capabilities they require, and address many of the unique challenges that are
associated with their particular markets and the commodities they produce, trade or consume.
Outlook and Analysis
In much of our market commentary, ComTech has noted that we see the “disaggregation” of traditional CTRM as an accelerating trend. Under this
new deployment model, which heavily leverages cloud technologies, many of the advanced analytics and optimization capabilities that vendors have
built into large monolithic ETRM/CTRM solutions are decoupled from the more “traditional” transaction management functions - including deal
capture, scheduling and position management. This model allows users to add additional capabilities to their ETRM/CTRM infrastructure without
the need to replace or customize their existing solutions. Additionally, by unbundling these capabilities that were once only available in broad,
complex and expensive systems, customers can select only those capabilities that are most important to their business at that time yet add additional
capabilities as the business grows and their needs change – lowering their total cost of ownership and improving technical agility.
ComTech had previously described this approach as “CTRM as an Architecture” (see ComTech’s whitepaper on the topic here), and a growing number
of other vendors, including Generation10 (who have adopted the term “ecosystem approach” to describe their offering and have developed an
integration platform and a number of functional modules or apps), have followed a similar path. A related, but somewhat different approach is
evident in solutions offered by the “platform” vendors, like Beacon, who provide commodity-specific components that tightly integrate with ERP
© Commodity Technology Advisory llc
February 2019
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