White Papers Leveraging the cloud for improved performance | Page 8

Leveraging the Cloud for Improved Performance
A ComTechAdvisory Whitepaper
Global agricultural trading company
This large multi-national firm was relying on their ac-
counting systems (SAP) along with Excel spreadsheets
to manage their wide-ranging business; an infrastruc-
ture that required significant manual effort for commod-
ity trade capture, shipments, settlements, and other ac-
tivities. These systems didn’t provide adequate insight
into any number of key metrics, such as counterparty
risk exposures and risk reporting. The processes were
unable to produce timely and accurate business report-
ing, especially the vessel P&L and other physical and
derivative P&L reports. Additionally, reconciliation of
several custom-made Excel spreadsheets by different
users was difficult and time consuming, and long report-
ing cycles did not provide real-time information and in-
hibited decision making.
After a comprehensive search for a solution to address
their complex needs, they selected and implemented
Eka’s cloud-based CTRM solution for their agriculture
commodity trading and risk management. Once fully
implemented, the company was able to manage and
optimize their entire commodities value chain including
trade capture, logistics, invoicing, and settlement. With
seamless integration with SAP, invoices and pay state-
ments, EOD results and counterparty master data is
now automatically posted from Eka to SAP, resulting in
accelerated cash flows, lower costs and greater insights
into counterparty credit exposures.
Additionally, with improved decision-making via real-time
scenario and intelligence capabilities the company has
been able to provide their deal-makers and staff with the
market insights necessary to excel in an increasingly
complex marketplace.
SUMMARY
It has taken some time for the commodity trading and
commodity management markets to fully embrace the
benefits of cloud delivered solutions and overcome
lingering cybersecurity concerns. Though traditional
on-premises installations will continue, it’s increasing-
ly clear that cloud delivered CTRM/CM solutions will
dominate the market in the coming years as more ven-
dors make the necessary investments to enable their
solutions to run effectively in a could environment.
For agricultural-centric businesses, the recent avail-
ability of cloud delivered solutions provides them the
opportunity to take advantage of lower deployment
costs, increased scalability, improved security and
on-demand advanced analytics. Those companies
that have selected these systems, like Eka Trading
and Risk Management, now have the ability 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.