White Papers Consumer Product Companies Smart Commodity | Page 6

Commodity Management

A ComTech Advisory Whitepaper

While these solutions are in the process of being taken to market, Eka does appear to be keen to innovate specific industry
solutions based on the use of its modular architecture and selective use of functional modules to provide end users with
tailored solutions on a common platform at a competitive cost.
However, EKA’s true differentiator is the promise of helping customers make better, fact-based business decisions such as,
for example,
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•
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What should we hedge and how much?
How effective and profitable are our hedging operations?
What is the impact of the net price of our purchases including the impact of hedges?
What is the best way to optimize our production and procurement plans?

Utilizing predictive analytics, users can make better business decisions by providing more insights through views on what the
future could look like and then by helping users to make decisions. For example, 6-months into a 12-month budget cycle, the
solution can help users understand where they are saving, how much they are saving and what they can do to optimize the
plan still further. This type of decision support and analytics is provided through user-defined graphical and intuitive
dashboards that provide access to current information and allow drill-down into all aspects of the information.

Summary
As consumer product companies experience continued and even greater raw material price volatility, they will be forced to
adopt a more market-based approach to commodity management. They will seek solutions that have a light footprint, that
are agile, flexible and can deliver significant business benefit by guiding and aiding users through the significant complexities
of the supply chain and commodity management to make better and more informed decisions. Today, a small number of
CTRM software vendors have commodity management solutions that help monitor and report in an after the fact manner
and that are based on older technologies and development approaches that make them expensive and inflexible.
Commodity management solutions that are based on new web-enabled and service oriented architectures offer a lower cost
of ownership and are significantly more flexible. Those that can move the commodity management software category further
by innovation in predictive analytics, optimization and decision support, are better positioned to assist consumer product
companies of all sizes and foci. EKA has an offering that holds much promise in this regard and is pushing to define the future
of smart commodity management or commodity management v.2.0.

© Commodity Technology Advisory LLC, 2014

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