capSpire Blog

We live and work in an on-demand world in which we expect information to be available whenever and where we want.

This is especially true for the fuel-buying industry in which market dynamics that affect commodity prices shift from moment to moment. No commodity-marketing company wants to delay getting critical information to its buyers. And no buyer wants to dedicate time and resources to hunting down the latest prices. In the time that buyers and sellers dedicate to manually transmitting and gathering information, money and opportunities are lost. Let’s take a smarter approach to commodity sales.

This is why conducting deals online is a growing industry trend. Web-based trading platforms offer major benefits to both sellers and buyers of refined products:

1) Convenience is key. Because information on the web is accessible 24/7, buyers around the world can view the latest prices and purchase fuel whenever they want—independent of support staff on the seller’s side and even outside traditional office hours.

2) Communication from sellers to buyers is more efficient. Buyers can access a web-based platform whenever they want and see updated information in real time. And every time a price changes or some other significant event occurs, buyers can receive a direct and instantaneous alert via email or text.

3) Buyers can view the latest data and make purchases wherever they are using their preferred technology. If they’re at their desk, they can use a PC. If they’re on the go, they can use a tablet or smartphone.

4) Both large and small commodity-marketing companies can leverage this technology to enhance customer engagement and boost margins. Large companies have the opportunity to engage buyers with more intimate, personalized, and efficient customer service while small companies have the opportunity to reach a much larger pool of buyers and increase revenue.

5) Buyers have flexibility in terms of how they want to purchase: prompt sales, forward sales, heat-curve sales, bids, or market sales.

6) Sellers can unload inventory more quickly as a result of providing buyers with on-demand, frequently updated information; more convenience; and more flexibility.

capSpire’s Gravitate solution is an example of a web-based platform that is revolutionizing the interaction between commodity-trading companies and their trading partners when executing transactions.

Gravitate delivers critical business intelligence such as current prices, historical price charts, lifting summaries, deal performance, and available credit to your customer’s fingertips. Using Gravitate’s built-in notification system, buyers receive automatic alerts about daily prices with real-time updates, which enables buyers to monitor prices in a more transparent way. Buyers can even configure event- and time-based alerts about price changes, confirmation of new trades, and ratable quantity deals to align with their business processes. Out-of-the-box integration with CTRM systems, such as Allegro and RightAngle, ensures that the latest data is available without re-keying information. Additionally, Gravitate provides a secure environment for customers to store and download their documents easily, including contracts, invoices, bills of lading, and interactive data charts.

As a result, Gravitate provides the tools needed to quickly access and evaluate data in order to make better, timely purchase decisions despite ever-changing market information. Furthermore, Gravitate empowers buyers to take control of the entire commodity-trading lifecycle and enables marketers to engage them more efficiently throughout the process. By enabling your company to become a more helpful and accommodating seller, buyers can become more loyal to your brand and do not make purchase decisions based solely on price.

For more information about Gravitate, visit www.capspire.com/gravitate or email info@capspire.com.