Commodity Market Development ...

CTRM Software

Trading in today's complex commodity sectors continues to be driven by technology. This Award will be granted to the company which has made a unique and substantial impact on commodity market trading efficiency and effectiveness – in the quality of trade execution, risk management and reporting – through technological advances.

CTRM software has remained a bastion of the traditional licensing, implementation on-site, and support and maintenance model. The practice of commodity trading, transaction and risk management is complex ... and for a variety of reasons. Traders in this industry can (and many do) transact in multiple commodities, multiple markets, multiple instruments, multiple assets, multiple currencies, and utilise multiple transportation methods. They make their buying and selling decisions by constantly tracking and analysing price trends, price correlations, supply/demand imbalances, physical system constraints, weather forecasts, and a plethora of other factors, both internal and external to the company.

In this globalised, integrated, multi-commodity environment, with rising trading volumes and increasing data (and speed), together with increased regulatory and oversight requirements, firms must seek out new solutions to managing their full enterprise. And if that were not difficult enough, the trend towards a more mobile workplace means that in order to ensure maximum productivity and efficiency, many business applications increasingly need to be accessible remotely.

Most forward-looking commodity companies are now upgrading their personnel and the technology infrastructure to more effectively manage enterprise-wide risks. Companies are migrating from their legacy systems, point applications and paper/Excel-based procedures to an integrated enterprise risk management system developed as part of the enterprise resource planning (ERP) process.

CTRM System Advancement - Recent developments have highlighted the risks and volatility inherent in the commodity marketplace. This has focussed attention on the critical systems that record the company’s activities – the CTRM systems – supporting decision making and potentially integrating a full range of services across the supply chain. We want to hear from those companies providing the full-scale, traditionally installed systems AND those providing more tailored and cost effective solutions built around architectures that are more open and affordable. This includes cloud-based and SaaS CTRM specialists.

Innovating E/CTRM - Regulatory changes such as Dodd-Frank in the US, and REMIT with the EU, now require organisations to be increasingly transparent about their operations. While many of the regulatory requirements relate to improvements in business process and compliance, the CTRM platform is increasingly looked at to augment these processes. Thus, the increased oversight of markets and participants by stakeholders and regulators has resulted in an increased onus on risk management in all its forms.

The Shortlisted Nominees will be those CTRM software providers that have demonstrated ongoing expertise, client implementation success, and a broad talent in offering robust products and solutions to the commodity industry. This is a heavily contested category so the quality of your nomination is crucial.

Your nomination should include:

• The company, division or product description you are nominating.
• Notable achievements made during the last year (up to September 2012).
• No more than 150 words explaining why your company or product should be recognised for an Award. Accompanying documents and an expanded submission demonstrating the excellence of the nominee can be sent directly to us or you can request a conversation/interview with a member of the Awards Panel.