White Papers Consumer Product Companies Smart Commodity | Page 5

Commodity Management

A ComTech Advisory Whitepaper

Finally, in order to eliminate integration issues, provide improved data quality and timeliness of information, they
will need to be multi-commodity and encompass the entire supply chain from origination to point of sale capturing
all the data necessary in a single platform.
In short, commodity management v. 2.0 will need to incorporate procurement/trading, supply chain and risk
management functionality and data providing a user-controlled and highly usable predictive analysis environment.
Commodity management solutions need to move from after the fact transaction management to fact-based
decision, predictive and prescriptive support systems in order to provide the types of business benefits needed in
the consumer products arena of today and the future.

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EKA’s Smart Commodity Management Solution
EKA has a strong track record of delivering CTRM solutions in the agricultural and Softs space specifically and is increasingly
active in both the metals and energy commodity markets. Its solution set is based on modern architectures and technologies,
is highly modular and web-enabled. It believes its commodity management solution is strongly differentiated over its
competitors in providing decision support, predictive analytics and optimization
tools and its development focus will continue to be the optimization and
Eka is redefining ‘commodity
decision support aspects of its solution. Eka is redefining ‘commodity
management’ as not just an
management’ as not just an after the fact monitoring and reporting solution,
after the fact monitoring and but one that helps users make better and more informed business decisions.
Eka is defining smart commodity management or v2.0. of this software
reporting solution, but one
category.

that helps users make better
and more informed business
decisions.

EKA has rightly taken the view that there is a universe of requirements for the
various types and scales of consumer product businesses ranging from a rather
simple need to hedge fixed price risk via derivatives, all the way through to
supporting extremely complex multi-commodity supply chain optimization,
management and hedging at global businesses. It has configured a series of commodity management solutions that offer an
affordable and pragmatic solution in each instance by making use of its modular solution set and configuring specific
solutions by bringing together the right modules in preconfigured arrangements. For customers that simply hedge out fixed
price risk, Eka has configured a solution that includes functionality such as:
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The ability to import exposures from the ERP system,
Identify hedges,
Enter and manage the commodity derivatives,
Handle FX exposure,
Perform hedge accounting, and the regulatory reporting aspects of this activity,
As well as monitor and manage market risks.

The solution may be provided via the internet.
At the other end of the scale, Eka has included additional modules to fully support:
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Procurement planning activities,
Coverage and variance analysis
Decision support tools such as simulation, Predictive analytics and,
Optimization.

The result of this is a fully featured and comprehensive Smart Commodity Management v2.0 solution.
EKA’s approach promises the potential of significant business benefits in competitive markets and a reduced total cost of
ownership. It also offers scalability and agility so that if the business evolves and becomes more complex, additional modules
may easily be added.

© Commodity Technology Advisory LLC, 2014

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