– Suite of solutions from OpenLink provides clear path to achieving quantifiable benefits for clients by maximizing returns on physical assets, reducing operational risks and lowering costs
Open Link Financial, Inc. (OpenLink), a leading provider of cross-asset trading, risk management and operations processing software, today released findings from a recent webinar which surveyed senior energy and commodities industry professionals focused on optimizing of physical assets. The survey revealed that while many have made progress, the increasing complexity of their operating environments is stressing current analytical models. Over 80% of the respondents said they struggle modeling all the assets in the portfolio and 62% of respondents stated that they needed to more rapidly calculate optimal results in response to changes in the market.
During the survey, industry professionals were also asked what the most important next steps to improving performance of their landscape are. The top four strategies for improving performance were:
– Integrating trading and operations workflow 23%
– Optimizing simultaneously across the entire portfolio 21%
– Modeling different time horizons 13%
– Ensuring data integrity 11%
Patrick Reames, managing director, the Americas, at CommodityPoint, noted, “Companies should always be looking to maximize returns on their physical assets. Unfortunately, most commercial ETRM/CTRM physical commodity capable systems are focused on managing logistics, such as scheduling, and have limited capabilities to provide risk management and optimization of the underlying assets, so the focus on optimizing portfolios and modeling is not surprising.”
Survey results supported this with 63% of respondents stating they had work to do to fully optimize results.
These findings confirm OpenLink’s technology blueprint for SmartETRM, which incorporates the sophisticated trading and execution capabilities of its flagship Endur platform and the optimization capabilities of its IRM solution suite all on a common data set designed to improve speed and reduce operational risk. SmartETRM represents a new level of capability and integration allowing companies to easily model and optimize the full value chain for any commodity, any market, any regulation and any constraint with short response time.
Dr. Markus Seiser, optimization Division President at OpenLink, commented, “The volatility inherent in complex energy portfolios create opportunities to improve profit, reduce costs and leverage hedging strategies throughout the lifecycle of a physical transaction. Market participants require advanced technology solutions like OpenLink’s SmartETRM to translate real-time optimized data and decision support into actionable trading and execution. This unlocks significant savings, improved risk management and higher assurance of regulatory compliance.”
