The world is moving forward at a blinding pace. Technologies are faster, granting us split-second access to data and instant connections. For commodity trading companies, this means the days of faxing invoices and interacting with clients through daylong games of email tag are nearly gone. In our real-time, on-demand world each second matters. Commodity trading companies must keep pace with a business environment that moves at web speed.
The future of commodity trading companies’ business-to-business interactions is allowing clients on-demand access to business tools and processes 24 hours a day. Rapidly changing expectations make it imperative for clients to quickly access, analyze and make decisions based on ever-changing information. It’s time to empower customers and revolutionize the way business is done.
In the 1990’s, e-mail drastically improved the way commodity trading companies communicated with clients. Eventually instant message also became a way to facilitate communication between traders. The current business environment requires more streamlined collaboration, coordination, and transparency. Interactions between commodity trading companies and their customers must be performed multiple times a day across both organizations’ front office and back office personnel. A new paradigm is essential.
Today, commodity portals – secure online document storage and customer interaction platforms – offer a more trustworthy alternative to email and faxing when communicating with clients. Since commodity portal technology is quickly becoming the new best practice for collaboration between commodity trade companies and clients, in the near future all commodity trading organizations will offer some type of online access to essential data such as real-time prices, bills of lading, and invoices. Commodity portals aren’t simply a transparent way to execute business; they are also virtual marketers that help drive customer traffic.
Commodity portal technology delivers information to the fingertips of your customer. By using these portals, commodity trading organizations deliver a higher level of customer service and increase customer interactions. Portals seamlessly integrate with internal trading systems, consolidate key data into easy-to-read dashboards, and allow for customizable corporate branding. These solutions deliver real-time prices to the customer, which allows customers to immediately order product directly from the portal.
Let’s consider this: Twenty years ago most U.S. banks didn’t offer online portals for their customers to check current balances, deposit funds, and transfer money. These days, anyone searching for a new bank would most likely reject a bank that doesn’t offer portal technology. Putting vital information directly into your customers’ hands is commonplace, even expected, in this age of instant access. Furthermore, portal technology is a necessity for any company that wants to do business in the ever-expanding world of high-speed technology with an increasingly tech-savvy clientele that expects to instantly transact business online.
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About capSpire
capSpire is a global consulting and solutions company serving the Commodity Trade and Risk Management sector of the energy industry. Headquartered in the growing technology hub of Fayetteville, Arkansas, with an office in Tulsa, Oklahoma, capSpire has served over two dozen clients across North America and Europe. capSpire provides its clients with deep business and system expertise to simplify and streamline its commodity management functions for crude, natural gas, refined products, NGLs, coal, iron ore, agriculture and freight. Chief among its service offerings are IT strategy and planning, system selection, bespoke software development, implementation services, systems integration, complex enterprise content management and ongoing support.
