In today’s volatile markets, time is money. The world is moving fast, and you must react quickly and effectively to shifting markets or you can lose out. Good communication is essential and creating strong partnerships can be the difference between successfully navigating volatile markets and disaster.

The power of trading as one

In today’s volatile markets, time is money. The world is moving fast, and you must react quickly and effectively to shifting markets or you can lose out. Good communication is essential and creating strong partnerships can be the difference between successfully navigating volatile markets and disaster.

Digital commodity management can help you move at the speed of markets.

Successful commodity trading requires delivering the right product at the right time and price, but trading partners are often required to work through intermediaries to trade their products. While this process can be lucrative, it adds a level of complexity, which takes time.

While phone calls, emails, and discussions travel up and down the value chain, markets continue to move, leaving trading partners negotiating deals with information that may no longer be accurate. The once profitable deal could be much less lucrative by the time final contracts are created.

The process is also frustrating, leaving trading partners waiting around for answers to questions that could be simply answered if they could contact the right person directly.

There is a better way – working as one

Our Digital Commodity Management (CM) platform extends communication and collaboration across the entire value chain – from sourcing to trading and risk to supply chain, operations, and manufacturing – enabling trading partners to work as one team. All Digital CM applications are connected on one, cloud-based platform, providing complete visibility across the supply chain and enabling analytics using both internal and external data – market feeds, weather reports, historical analyses, shipping costs, etc.

By extending across the entire value chain, Eka’s platform enables you to collaborate directly with partners in sourcing, supply and procurement. You can engage with multiple partners at once, negotiate simultaneously, and manage the sale, purchase, payments, and delivery of all products on one platform – with access 24x7x365.

For example, you are a sugar refiner and you just received a query for a large order from a food company. You don’t have enough product to fill the order, so you need to fill the gap.

The Digital CM way – open your Supplier Connect app. Check the availability of sugar with your best suppliers. Check prices and shipping details to ensure they can meet your deadline. Place an order. Time elapsed – three minutes.

The legacy CTRM way – send an email to your supplier requesting pricing and shipping details. Wait for the email response. Respond confirming you want to proceed with the order. Receive email confirmation. Time elapsed – one day.

What happens if your food company wasn’t willing to wait a day? What if prices moved while you were negotiating – so now the great new order isn’t quite as profitable as it would have been? In either case, losing a day means losing profits.

That’s just one example. Now multiply that by every negotiation with suppliers, partners, and customers and you see the power of Digital CM. The instant access and digital collaboration decrease time spent on every negotiation, enabling more business opportunities so you don’t lose profits.