White Papers Addressing Commodity Market Challenges | Page 4

Addressing Commodity Market Challenges With Digitalization Enabled by Platform Technology
Advanced analytics, a goal common to most
digitalization efforts, can be particularly an issue
for these systems. Few if any CTRM/CM solutions
supply advanced capabilities to model and optimize
supply chains and the physical assets that comprise
them. As such, users are often left to either develop
custom data extracts or manually input pricing and
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position information from those systems into analytics
solutions, either homebuilt or 3rd party. Unfortunately,
these processes are error prone and/or can impart
considerable latency into the analytics process,
rendering the analysis suspect and outdated, and
undermining the return on the digitalization investment.
A NEW APPROACH IS NEEDED
Though many legacy CTRM vendors have sought to leverage cloud deployment to present a more
modern approach to potential buyers, the reality is that most of these “new” cloud applications
are simply a re-platforming of existing monolithic code. Without having been designed initially
to run in the cloud, they are unable to take advantage of “cloud native” capabilities such as on-
demand processor scaling to increase performance, rich APIs that permit rapid integration with
both internal and external data sources and systems, and seamless upgrades and maintenance.
While a few recent CTRM market entrants have
developed multi-tenanted cloud solutions that can
provide the advantages found only in products developed
specifically to run in the cloud, these applications are
limited in their commodity coverage and functional
scope. Market experience with these systems indicates
they may be a workable solution for a smaller company
that trades one of a very limited range of commodities
and in a specific market region. Unfortunately, as those
user companies attempt to scale their businesses
outside of their designated commodity and/or market,
they quickly find these solutions are unable to address
their new requirements - forcing that company to either
build custom software or find one or more alternative
systems; and in the process, burdening their resources
with time consuming and costly software selection and
implementation projects.
The market has also seen the introduction of
software “platforms” in recent years. With a platform
approach, the vendor provides an open architecture
solution (either via the cloud or installed onsite) that
addresses common though generally non-industry
specific business processes, along with the technical
infrastructure necessary to support and administer the
system. Some platform vendors may also provide some
industry-specific capabilities in the form of applications
or micro services for larger markets (such as financial
services); however, very few if any platform vendors
have the industry knowledge to address the wide
variety of very specific capabilities required by physical
commodity traders. For customers operating in the
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