White Papers Leveraging the cloud for improved performance | Page 6

Leveraging the Cloud for Improved Performance
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 vailability of sophisticated analytics – As the
global ags & softs markets continue to evolve,
growing more complex and globally integrated,
profits are more difficult to ensure. Companies
operating in these markets need to constantly
adjust and optimize their operations and strate-
gies. Testing new strategies or measuring per-
formance against plan throughout the supply
chain requires sophisticated analytics that can
reach beyond the CTRM solution - aggregating
data from multiple internal and external sources.
Given these significant complexities, it can be difficult
for a company seeking to leverage the benefits of the
cloud to identify a solution that addresses the com-
plete breadth of their needs. While there are a num-
ber of cloud providers that can and do address specif-
ic niches of the markets, either a specific commodity
or some portion of the supply chain, few solutions ex-
ist that can be deployed via the cloud and still provide
the depth and breadth of capabilities necessary to
address the challenges faced by today’s agricultural
market firms.
A ComTechAdvisory Whitepaper
The bottom-line for companies seeking to buy or pro-
cure a new CTRM/CM solution is that depending on
the nature of your business and which commodities
you buy, manage, or sell, the best fit solution may be
difficult to initially identify. Historically, this challenge
has resulted in a multitude of different approaches –
ranging from buying and deploying multiple CTRM
solutions from various vendors to manage each spe-
cific commodity or commodity group, to attempting to
build multi-commodity bespoke solutions internally.
Despite the growing demand for cloud delivered,
multi-commodity CTRM solutions, few vendors have
made the significant investment required to enable
their complex solutions to run effectively in a true
cloud environment. However, the customers of those
that have, such as Eka and their Trading and Risk
Management platform, now have the option to lever-
age the many advantages of the cloud, without sacri-
ficing the sophisticated capabilities they need to man-
age their complex and wide-ranging businesses.