Corporate Vision January 2017
14 CORPORATE VISION / January 2017 , With a team of 315 staff with offices in the Americas, Asia, Australia, and EMEA, Eka is the global leader in providing Smart Commodity Management software solutions. The company has over 50 tier one customers in agriculture, energy, bulk, and metals and mining. Michael Schwartz spoke to us in more depth about the reasons behind their success. “We are very excited to receive this recognition for our Commodity Analytics Cloud solution. Eka has redefined the commodities trading market by creating commodity value chain specific analytics to answer commodity market participants’ most important questions. To remain competitive in today’s complex and volatile markets, commodities companies need advanced analytics to make better, faster, fact-based decisions. “Commodity Analytics Cloud brings together data from across the value chain, including CTRM, ETRM, ERP, CRM, treasury, and spreadsheets. Users can leverage complex algorithms and predictive models quickly and efficiently. A generic business intelligence application requires millions of dollars and countless hours to develop the algorithms for a commodity-specific analytics solution. Pro-active Approach to Problem Solving Eka’s solutions provide the analytical and operational tools commodities companies need tomanage today’s complex and volatile markets. Eka’s best-of-breed solutions manage commodity trading, enterprise risk, compliance, procurement, supply chain, operations, logistics, bulk handling, processing, and decision support. Executive VP and CMOMichael Schwartz, discusses howEka has become an award winning firm. “Eka has created a series of apps specifically designed for commodity value chains that address high value business issues. Providing an end-to-end analysis of the entire enterprise, these apps span multiple categories including positions, P&L, trading, procurement, risk, credit, finance, supply chain, reconciliation, counterparties, and more. With Commodity Analytics Cloud, users can uncover opportunities otherwise unavailable and reveal invisible risks faster and more effectively. “Artificial intelligence (AI) is the next step to helping our customers answer questions they couldn’t answer before. The unprecedented volume, variety and velocity of data available from sensors, social media, and mobile devices require analytic abilities beyond conventional tools. Advanced algorithms with the ability to learn are required to make sense of so much unstructured data and provide insight to enable better decision making.” Eka’s team is a cross section of experts in industry, analytics, technology, and commodities. As well as having the experience of these experts, Michael explains the other reasons that help Eka stand out from their competitors. “Our solutions were developed based on the technology gaps we experienced in industry and conversations with our partners and customers. Many competitors are pitching generic BI or ERP systems to manage commodity analytics, but these systems are not designed for the complexity of commodity management. Commodities are not priced like other goods. Unlike most manufacturing businesses where the price of goods is known throughout the supply chain, unpriced and partially priced positions cause core differences in the way a commodity is bought, sold, shipped, stored, invoiced, accounted for, and valued throughout the supply chain. ERP and generic BI solutions have no way to account for the fact that prices will change in the future. BI solutions’ strength is in integrating neatly structured data from various sources – not interpreting unstructured formats and external sources that now inform commodities markets. “Eka’s Commodity Analytics Cloud provides five times the value of a generic BI system or a heavily customized ERP solution. It provides the insight business users require to make better, fact-based decisions. It’s also less expensive to implement, easier to use, and provides a quicker return on investment.” Technology is constantly changing, therefore companies need to adapt to changes if they are to thrive. Eka is no exception. Michael shares his thoughts on the industry and the techniques Eka employs to ensure they stay ahead of any emerging developments. “Most commodity trading companies are still relying on first generation CTRM systems, spreadsheets, generic BI solution and ERP systems to collect and analyse data. Commodity markets are fast-paced, data-intensive, and volatile, making tracking and analysing data challenging. First generation systems and solutions that are not designed specifically for commodity markets require a lot of manual manipulation – both time consuming and error prone – to gain visibility into commodities throughout the value chain. Additionally, the volume, velocity and variety of data is expanding every day, pushing commodities companies towards cloud-based services and advanced analytics to be able to make sense of all that data. “We invest over 20 percent of revenue each year in R&D, exploring innovative technology and testing new ideas to improve efficiency, effectiveness and profits. For example, in 2016 we started a drone pilot project with the University of Adelaide because we saw tremendous potential replacing manual scans and piloted aircrafts with drones. Based on our tests, we know that drones can complete a scan at 50% the cost in 50% of the time. At Eka, innovation is the cornerstone of our organization.” 1701CV16
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