For commodities companies, there are lots of ways to get analytics. The question arises: should you use a general analytics tool suitable for many different industries that can be customized, or should you use a commodities specific analytics tool? There are several benefits to using analytics that were built specifically for commodities companies.
Baked-In Intelligence of the Commodities Markets
Commodity specific analytics have been developed that leverage industry knowledge of the commodities markets, a critical advantage. Choosing commodity specific analytics enables commodities companies to immediately start using the built-in analytics to gain answers to the most important questions without needing to perform any customization. Although most analytics solutions (generic or otherwise) provide the ability to customize analytics, having the built-in analytics provides immediate value to commodities companies on day one of implementation.
The best commodity specific analytics solutions address high value business issues and span multiple categories including positions, P&L, trading, risk, credit, finance, supply chain, reconciliation, and counterparties.
Faster Processing of Commodities Specific Data
An analytics solution built specifically for the commodities markets has been designed with commodities data in mind. The commodities industry is inherently a big data business. A utility dealing with millions of consumers, a commodity trader buying, selling, storing, and moving cargo, or a consumer products company procuring thousands of items: all of these users need a solution that turns the mass amounts of data into insights for decision making. Most generic analytics tools do not have the capability to process this huge volume of data and perform real-time analysis in a timeframe that is useful to a business user.
Analytics Accessible to All Business Users
Many generic analytics tools remain in the realm of the IT department. To use these tools, business users rely on IT to create and customize the analytics they need. If the users’ needs later change, they need to go back to IT. Analytics tools should address the needs of traders, risk managers, analysts, supply chain/logistics managers, IT specialists, back office personnel, and executives.
Another issue that can hinder the ability of business users to gain real insights using a generic analytics tool is the source of the data to be analyzed. With many analytics tools, the data coming in must be formatted ahead of time in a specific way. To reap the greatest advantage, business users should have access to commodity specific analytics solutions that can take data from both internal and external sources with no pre-formatting.
Learn more about the benefits of analytics solutions focused on the commodities markets in "5 Essentials of an Effective Commodity Analytics Solution."
Eka’s Analytics Solution for Commodities Companies
Commodity Analytics Cloud has been built with the specific needs of commodity companies in mind. Leveraging algorithms specific for the commodities market, Commodity Analytics Cloud enables business users to gain unique insights into their business and take action before competitors. The revolutionary next-generation Pace technology processes millions of data entities in seconds which provides users the ability to move through data at unprecedented speed. With Commodity Analytics Cloud, the data can come from both internal and external sources and requires no involvement from the IT department. Commodity Analytics Cloud opens analytics to everyone.
