Commodity Management is essentially CTRM plus ERP functionalities to support the physical supply chain involved in moving and managing the commodity and we defined these terms a few years ago in our groundbreaking white paper – CTRM as an Architecture (available as a free download here). CTRM, on the other hand, if strictly defined, is more about managing the trade, risks created by the trade, and the settlement and invoicing of that trade – essentially trade and risk management with a focus on market or price risk. These definitions also actually support the historical development of solutions and technologies to support commodity trading and that is why ComTech sees historical development of solutions as a key criteria when evaluating them. Indeed, as commodity trading and markets have evolved, the management of the physical side has become increasingly important and that trend is set to continue with regulations around traceability, carbon footprints and so on coming into force in the EU and other areas. Furthermore, over the last few years, geopolitical risks, drivers and events have been a large factor in markets meaning that operational risks also need to be better managed and operational risks often require more of a Commodity… continue reading