White Papers The Evolution of Smart Commodity Management | Page 3
Smart
Commodity
Management
A
ComTech
Advisory
Whitepaper
“Next
generation
commodity
management
solutions
must
have
a
light
footprint,
be
agile,
flexible
and
deliver
significant
business
benefit
by
guiding
and
informing
users
throughout
the
supply
chain
from
production
source
to
consumer
-‐
aggregating
data
and
providing
real-‐time
and
easily
consumable
information
and
analytics
-‐
all
with
a
focus
on
ensuring
optimized
decision-‐making
in
the
increasingly
complex
environment
that
is
commodity
management.”
Introduction
Over
the
last
twenty
or
more
years,
global
wholesale
commodity
markets
have
grown
and
evolved
substantially
and
in
the
process,
a
sizeable
new
software
category
has
been
established.
That
software
category
is
widely
known
as
Commodity
Management
(CM)
software
and,
at
the
highest
level,
it
can
be
defined
as
those
software
applications,
architectures
and
tools
that
support
the
business
processes
associated
with
managing
commodities.
CM
software
therefore
comprises
a
broad
set
of
functions
that
can
vary
considerably
depending
on
which
commodities
are
traded,
what
assets
are
employed
in
the
business,
where
those
assets
are
located,
and
what
the
nature
of
the
company’s
business
strategy
and
associated
business
processes.
CM
software
continues
to
evolve
quite
rapidly
in
lockstep
with
the
industry.
In
past
years,
CM
focused
squarely
on
trading
and
risk
management
as
CTRM
software,
but
in
recent
years
it
has
been
extended
into
the
supply
chain
with
solutions
such
as
shipping
and
stockyard
bulk
handling,
for
example.
As
the
software
category
has
evolved,
so
has
the
volume
and
nature
of
the
data
that
the
software
captures,
manipulates
and
stores.
Today,