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Webinar: The Need for Speed: How Evolving Markets Are Impacting Risk Management
Listen to trading and risk experts discuss the modernization of risk operations and whether current E/CTRM systems meet the demands for agility, efficiency, and error reduction.
September 11th, 2024 | 1:01
Summary KeywordsETRM, CTRM, trade risk management, ETRM software, energy transition, market volatility, risk operations, trade risk management software
Transcript
Sameer SolejaFounder & CEO, Molecule
Kari FosterVP of Marketing, Molecule
Jeffrey DaviesFounder, EnerWrap
Steve HarwitzFinancial Risk Manager, Delta Air Lines
Michael BarrettManaging Partner, EY
Ben HillaryManaging Director, Commodities People
Ben Hillary Hello, everyone. Good morning, afternoon, or evening from wherever you are tuning in from. Welcome to today's webinar, The Need for Speed: How Evolving Markets are impacting risk management. My name is Ben Hillary. I'm Managing Director of Commodities People. And yeah, I would really, really like to start by saying a very huge thank you to you all for being here with us. Really delighted to see how much this webinar has attracted the interest of the industry. We've got over 400 registrants from every corner of the globe and every part of the commodities ecosystem. In the next 60 minutes, we'll be deep diving into a wide range of forces, trends, megatrends impacting commodity markets today. These will include climate change, geopolitics, volatility, just to name a few. We'll then be asking and exploring that critical question: are current trading systems and technologies supporting companies in managing these risks and achieving their goals? We will also be drawing deeply on the outcomes and critical findings from Molecule's recent groundbreaking industry survey and report on what's driving the modernization of risk operations and systems. I think someone has, if one of my colleagues could very kindly post the link to download that in the chat. That would be excellent.
I'm absolutely delighted and thrilled to be joined here by an exceptionally knowledgeable panel bringing a really wide range of experiences to the session. We've got Steve Harwitz, financial manager over at Delta Airlines, Sameer Soleja, founder and CEO of Molecule, Kari Foster, VP of Marketing for Molecule, Jeff Davies, founder of EnerWrap, and Michael Barrett, managing partner at EY.
Some of the subjects we'll be covering today include what are the key factors impacting risk management practices today, what challenges are preventing the modernization of risk operations, what are companies' top risk management priorities and goals that they expect to achieve with an E or CTRM system? And are the E/CTRM systems of today supporting the need for greater speed and efficiency? The webinar will take the format of a panel discussion followed by Q&A. On that note, throughout the webinar, please be posting your questions into the Q\&A box and upvoting others of interest. I'll then be picking the top few at the end of the session and put those to the panel. Also, do please make full use of the chat channel for any comments you want to share with the panel and the audience, or even just to introduce yourself, say hello, and where you're from.
Without further ado, I'm delighted to pass over to Kari Foster, VP for Marketing for Molecule. Kari, the metaphorical floor is yours.
Kari Foster Thank you so much, Ben. Thank you all for joining as well. It's great to see such a huge interest in this topic. I'm really excited to moderate this panel discussion today. This topic of technology modernization is always a hot one. While it's easy to say we need to modernize our systems, it's a whole other ball of wax to actually do that and implement change. So that's what this discussion will be about. What are the factors contributing to the need to modernize? What are the opportunities and challenges of modernizing your trading and risk operations? And how are the systems of today supporting this growing need? Before we kick things off, Sameer, would you like to add anything to that?
Sameer Soleja I just think it's really fascinating what we saw in the report and the report that's linked here, and I'm sure that'll come up a ton in our conversation, but I definitely urge everybody to read the report if you get a chance.
Ben Hillary Awesome. Well, thank you, Sameer. And so we'll go ahead and kick things off. Ben, I believe we have a quick poll that we'll be launching. So is modernizing your risk operations currently an initiative that's underway at your organization? If you could just let us know if you currently have a modernization initiative underway, if you have one planned, or if that's maybe something that's not currently planned. While you're taking that poll, I'll tell you a little bit about the survey that was the foundation for this report we conducted earlier this year. And we released the report in August called the ETRM/CTRM Transformation and Modernization Report. And the poll question you're answering now is actually a question we asked in the survey we conducted. Ben, if we're ready to close that out, or did you want to give a little bit more time on that? Let's take a look at how you voted, and we can see how they compare to our previous survey results as well. So it looks like there's a little over three quarters of you who already have something underway or you have a modernization initiative already planned. So this lines up very well with the poll results or from the survey results and what we published in our report, which we'll talk about in just a little bit.
So I think we can close that out. Great. Thank you for that. And if we can move to slide two, please. So I'll give you a little bit of background on the survey and why we conducted it. If you've ever heard the phrase digital transformation. You've probably heard it quite a bit in the last four to five years, especially in the wake of the global COVID pandemic, as companies scramble to digitalize many parts of their operations in order to keep those operations moving as smoothly as possible. Additionally, in the last couple of years, we've seen the impact of advanced technologies like AI on the way we all do our jobs. So as all of these forces of change come together, companies are naturally reevaluating their tech stacks, and they're asking, how can we improve? If we can move to the next slide, please. So that's why we began this journey and conducted our survey at the beginning of this year, so we could understand the extent to which this sentiment was being felt. Is modernization indeed a top priority? What are the challenges to modernization and the opportunities for the platforms of today to evolve? And are ETRMs and CTRMs adapting to meet modern needs on the trading floor within the trading organization?
Next slide, please. So let's dive in and look at some of the results that we cover in our report. We'll move to the next slide. Our survey asked, how have the following factors impacted your risk management practices? And not too not surprising here, but market volatility had the greatest impact on change among all survey participants. But all the factors were noted to have a significant impact. 73 percent indicated that their risk management practices have been impacted at least somewhat by any of the listed factors. We've certainly seen the anecdotal evidence in the market that the advent of new risks, such as new instruments, new technologies, compliance, need to be managed. I will now take it to the panel. From your varied perspectives, what have you seen as the contributors to how these factors are impacting risk management practices? For instance, the effect of the energy transition on markets. Who would like to start on that?
Michael Barrett Now, I can jump in. One of the things that really, we're seeing across the board, and while market volatility is important, it's really that organizational shift column that is the tail that I feel that wags the dog. As organizations focus more and more on sustainability, we see this move to more complicated power contracts, higher quantities of them, and really needing to build that in too, and it speaks to the diversity of the commodities, and really build in the ability to capture those transactions into the system. Then on the flip side of things, as we think about data centers out there, really the AI movement, the computational needs, and the amount of data centers out there is making the world power hungry, which starts a whole new level of types of transactions out there. Those two things are really what I'm seeing drive energy transition at this point in time.
Kari Foster Steve, would you like to comment from someone who is on the user side and experiencing a lot of this? How would you say?
Steve Harwitz Making sure I'm not muted. Yeah, I think from the user side, we're seeing multiple needs as we see from the chart. I mean, it's not just market volatility or compliance. I mean, it's all of them in one, not just in terms of a modern sustainability shift, but also in product offerings and the scope of what companies are utilizing the programs for. Market volatility leads to executive need for additional information, which need… And if you have more types of products that's going to lend to more compliance needs. And obviously, if you have more products, you may have different geographics. So I think it's really a combination of all of them. And I think that's noted in the results that show that they're all important.
Kari Foster Jeff, I'd love to hear from you. You have a trading background, and I'd love to hear your perspective on this data.
Jeff Davies When I think about the current markets, what's really unique to me versus the 20–25 years I've been involved in the energy markets, really from an investing side, is typically you needed to worry about one side of the supply–demand equation. I feel like this moment in time, more so than ever, you need to focus on supply and demand. You look at power markets in the US as an example, demand was relatively flat for the last several decades. Now, with the EV transition, with the AI power demand coming on, you have to worry about demand and also supply as the supply changes from the energy fuel sources that we're using for power supply. I think about the oil markets, the EV transition. We've gone through that shale era, dealt with those supply changes. But really for the first time, I feel like you have to have your pulse on both the supply and demand side of the equation, moreso in the last several decades.
Kari Foster Sameer, anything to add from a vendor perspective?
Sameer Soleja Yeah, I think building on what Jeff said, where folks are having to contemplate optimizing both the supply and demand sides of the equation, I think what this chart shows is that it lists out, I don't know, five factors that have always been important in managing risk management, and they're always changing. I think the only difference we're seeing now is that they're all changing at the same time. Just like, I would say, business overall in the US, the bar is getting higher, or in the world, the bar is getting higher, and we have to juggle many, many more problems all at once to move forward and even just to keep pace.
Kari Foster Excellent. Thank you, everyone. If we can move to the next slide, please. We're going to go a level deeper now and talk about modernizing risk operations. If we could just move to the next slide. Our survey asked, is modernizing your risk operations currently an initiative that's underway? As you recall, you answered this question in our poll earlier. So many of you did say that it is either underway or planned. And according to our survey results, 90 percent of our respondents report either having something underway or having something planned. And you can see also how that breaks down by company type as well. And so that’s particularly prevalent with renewables, with producers, with banks and brokers. But basically, over 75 percent of all the company types have a modernization initiative already underway or planned. So, next question for the panel. The energy industry, in particular, has been traditionally slower to adopt new technologies compared to other industries. So why are trading organizations now shifting so dramatically towards modernizing their operations?
Steve Harwitz I think it's really, and not to go back to the title of the report, but it's the need for speed, right? It's the need for companies to be able to adapt faster, to have information faster, to be able to deliver information not just faster, but better, and more correct isn’t really a great term, but we have to make sure that that information that goes to various constituents of that data is what those people want. It's working with more data better that because we have more data, we have to be able to properly get that out. I think it's requiring or at least testing the limits of the systems that are already in place, where a lot of companies are going, yeah, I have something in place, but it's really not doing what I want it to do anymore.
Sameer Soleja I think specifically, some of those things are around power. Power is just harder to manage from a system's perspective than crude was or gas was or refined products were, simply because of the sheer volumes of data.
Kari Foster Jeff or Michael, do you have anything to add?
Jeff Davies I'd say when you think about risk, there's realized volatility, which can be measured and seen. Then there's unrealized volatility, which is really the unknown in which most organizations, from a risk perspective, you try to manage those unknown risks. The change is, this is about energy and technology, right? You think of the changes in the technology markets just over the last two years. It's, I believe, less than two years ago, since ChatGPT came out, you look at what's taking place in AI. None of us saw that coming just two years ago. Nvidia will do pushing $40–$50 billion of data center sales next year versus $4 billion just 18 months ago, a quarter, we're talking about. You see these changes come up that are unknown risk or unknown changes. As the amount of unknown changes come into the market, risk management policies become more and more necessary.
Michael Barrett Yeah, and I think it's very easy to look at this graphic and overlay data power AI as the major drivers of change here. I would suggest people also think about some of the other factors, particularly as we look at the consumer and the producer line item. Yes, traders have been slow to change, but consumers and producers are also in industries that haven't had really active commodity management platforms before. Of course, there's been some. I'm not characterizing everybody in the industry the same way, but there's a lot of growth opportunity there as well for those industry participants. The other thing to really think about is, my morning started thinking about one of our insurance clients and what they really have to do to respond to climate change and the number of weather events that they've been having, that's really thinking about them entering into the derivative markets with weather derivatives a lot more. That's really going to propel a different rate of change with the industry. We're at a point where, yeah, there's some big, chunky items that are going on in the space that we can clearly identify, but there's also so much more going on that's sending it into different directions and getting your hands around it can be quite a challenge.
Kari Foster Thank you. Now, let's look at another interesting result from the report to mull over. If we could go to the next slide, please. Our survey asked, how confident are you in your ability to launch a modernization initiative at your company? Overwhelmingly, respondents were either somewhat or very confident. However, it's not without its challenges, because we also asked about what challenges they face that are preventing modernization. And the two greatest challenges are cost and executive buy-in. So back to our panelists, given the trend towards modernization and then also the challenges that are preventing it, what do trading organizations need to do to get that executive buy-in and budget and also mitigate the risks associated with changing?
Sameer Soleja It would seem that it is a lot easier to throw together a proof of concept today with PowerBI, maybe in front of even a static spreadsheet data set to give an executive or an executive team an idea of what you could do with budget. And there's lots of people who can do it. So I think that's one thing you can do.
Kari Foster Steve, would you like... Do you have a perspective, since you have probably been a part of those conversations, getting buy-in? What is your perspective?
Steve Harwitz Yeah, I think certainly for companies that are trying to run leaner, both on budget and headcount and processes, you're chasing a dollar, right? You're chasing a dollar that could go to a different area of the company or a different area of even the finance organization or the trading organization that is looking at the responsibility of risk as a bigger necessity, let's say, in that department. I think there is really a concern about the costs. I think there is absolutely a concern about making sure that you have that executive buy-in, right? Is that the right people get shown the right things to say, okay, I'm going to commit dollars into this project. And to get that done, and I know we're going to talk about this going forward, but it's really about, is my data better? Is it going to be put in fast, quickly? Am I going to be able to do this under budget?
Michael Barrett Yeah, and I think that that's really important. Sameer talked about being able to do a proof of concept real quickly. And so why aren't we being able to get that executive buy-in? Why aren't we being able to get those dollars? I think it really gets down to, how are we communicating the value proposition? How are we thinking about measuring the current state of the organization and forecasting what the current state or the state will be after implementation of that technology. We really have to focus on what are those KPIs that drive the organization and how do these technologies really put the organization in a better place from a value perspective, not only better earnings, but also better shareholder value.
Kari Foster Excellent. Thank you very much. Will you go to the next slide, please? We're going to drill down another level and start the discussion around ETRMs and CTRMs, and what are your goals and priorities for the trade risk system. If we could go to the next slide, please. Our survey asked, what are the risk management priorities that you do not see changing in the next five years? Almost 70 percent responded with our top two that you see here, agility and analytics. So we start to see this underlying theme, which Steve alluded to, of speed emerge from the data as trading organizations are motivated to modernize, driven by the need to get things done quicker. Panelists, what do you make of what the survey respondents deemed as their top unchanging risk management priorities? What are your hot takes?
Steve Harwitz Well, I think we've gone from, and I'll just give my own examples for that, not just here, but in previous roles, where your data is updated by 11:00 AM, 10:00 AM. Let's do it by 9:00. Let's do it by 7:30. And we're approaching this ability of real time refreshing of data so that, again, it gets back to the geographics, right? If somebody is in Europe, if somebody is in Asia, if somebody is here in the US, of when folks have the data and can actually be using it. And it is right, concise, and on time.
Jeff Davies Yeah, it's not only the speed of data that's changing right now, it's the amount of data, it's what you can do with that data, how you can share that data. So at the end of the day, the technology side of the market is changing more rapidly. I hate to overplay AI, but I don't think you are overplaying AI to say it's the biggest change in technological markets since the Internet came out, basically. So you have this rapidly changing technological market with just these data sets that continue to grow and grow and grow every year.
Kari Foster Yeah. Oh, please Go ahead, Michael.
Michael Barrett I'm sorry. Jeff, that really underscores one of the things that I thought about this, is that flexibility in solving problems seems very, very low to me. Now, absolutely in the energy space, in the commodity space, we're not traditionally those people that like the go fast and break things approach. But if we're really thinking about employing AI for problem solving, if we're really thinking about going better, faster, stronger, why aren't we really focused on that flexibility in solving problems versus analytics and agility, just data for data's sake at some points in time? That's a big open question for me.
Kari Foster That's a great point. Sameer, anything to add?
Sameer Soleja I don't know. I think that to Michael's question, I think the first three items in the response set, agility, analytics, and operational visibility, are really three sides of the same coin, to take that metaphor a little too far. But I think the flexibility thing is hard. It requires thinking about problems in different ways, and that's not what large organizations certainly are really great at. That's not what anybody's great at. And I think it can be hard for people to switch to a different frame, such as that of AI, myself included, when trying to solve an issue.
Kari Foster Yeah, and I think I will say that, Jeff, you're not overplaying AI because we're going to go into this a little bit later on, and we'll talk about how it is, or what are the things that people want to see out of their systems. And there's definitely a little bit of an AI trend emerging from that. It's the elephant in the room. It's hard to avoid. So if we could move to the next slide, please. So given that the modernization of risk operations is a clear priority, are ETRMs and CTRMs supporting that in helping companies achieve their goals? And we asked in our survey, what goals does your ETRM or CTRM system help you achieve? And the most important goal is front office and trading activities, followed by regulatory compliance and audit, IT compliance, risk risk monitoring and back office activities. There's also a growing need for renewable credit and offset management and scheduling and logistics. If we can move to the next slide, please. Our survey asked, how do you measure ROI for your ETRM or CTRM? And ROI is a really tricky thing to measure no matter what industry you're in, because it's not always super clear and not always about a monetary return on your investment.
And as you can see from the results, that's the case here. Efficiencies gained is the top measure of ROI. So again, we see the recurring theme of getting things done quicker. So the question for the panel, if ROI is the top or is the the ROI of an ETRM system is being measured by efficiencies gained and error reduction, and their top priority, as you saw before, is agility, are the systems of today meeting those needs?
Steve Harwitz I certainly think in our organization, we are looking at efficiencies as to the success of a program. And I spoke to it earlier, but how fast is that data getting out? How fast can your financial reporting people get their journal entries done if they're using the data? How fast can your treasurer make monetary decisions if you're getting margined or if counterparties are having lines tapped and that sort of thing? It was interesting when we went through an RFP, when we sat in with the controllers to say, okay, we want to put in this system. They said, all right, well, what are we getting out of it? And you don't want to say, well, everything's going to be faster or we're going to have a reduction in headcount, or this is going to cost money because they want a return on the money that they're going to be putting in. So it's interesting that none of these are really… These responses are not focused on dollar amounts, right? But ultimately, you're going to be making better business decisions that are going to affect the bottom line. They're going to affect the return from that department that you're supporting.
Kari Foster The indirect monetary return, right? Sameer, I saw you nodding in an agreement earlier. Do you have anything to add to that?
Sameer Soleja Yeah, I mean, I think just to take that even more detailed down a level, I imagine being in somebody like Steve's seat or his peer at another organization. The efficiencies gained question is something you feel viscerally like, Hey, I've got to spend four hours this morning joining four spreadsheets together and hoping I didn't make a mistake to get this answer that financial reporting wanted. I think the Holy Grail here is I get to…. Instead, I hit a button or ask an AI, and it tells whoever asked the question the answer to their question.
Kari Foster Steve and Michael, I have a question specifically for the two of you. In every industry, there's still a little bit of an attitude of this is how we've always done it, so why change? What do you think are the biggest benefits of transitioning to a more modern system rather than sticking with the status quo?
Michael Barrett Yeah, you really have to focus on that job satisfaction element of it. And we think about this not only in ETRMs, but system implementations across the board. The reluctance to change, it comes from people being comfortable in their jobs, knowing how to execute their jobs, and anything that's going to interrupt their confidence in being able to perform or their confidence in the security of their role is really going to affect their willingness to adopt these new technologies. Focusing on the force multiplication efforts of it, how you're going to do better, faster, stronger with the same resources, and talking through that change process with users to really reinforce that it's going to be better from a job satisfaction perspective is really important.
Steve Harwitz I mean, there's a lot of worry. Yeah, there's a lot of worry to Michael's point, from the user standpoint of, okay, I have to take data, massage data, put it into another system, roll that into Excel, massage it again, run VBA, put a report together, and make sure that it goes to the right people at the right time and have all the right pieces together. I feel a lot better when I can just hit a button and it all shows up in BI, or I can hit a button that shows up in Tableau, or I can make sure that I'm handling six different arms of reports and constituencies in one piece rather than putting it all together separately where, did I make a mistake? We know it's not making a mistake because we built in the protections around it. It's just, yeah, to not have those touchpoints in a modern system is really important to us. So I would assume that's pretty much the case for other end users.
Kari Foster Thank you. So while we're on the subject of ETRMs and CTRMs, let's get the perspective of our audience here with another quick poll. Ben, if you could please launch that. Thinking of your current ETRM or CTRM system, what is the biggest challenge you've experienced with it? If you're currently using an ETRM or CTRM system, if there's one thing about it that is most challenging for you to deal with, what would that be? If you don't see your particular challenge listed here, feel free to choose Other. If everything is great with your current system, I'm happy for you. You can choose None. I'll give you a few more seconds then to mull this over.
Michael Barrett I want to see how many Nones pop up.
Kari Foster All right. Well, thanks, everyone. Ben, if we could go ahead and close this out and take a look at the results. I know we're itching to see.
Sameer Soleja I'm taking the under on too slow. Oh, yeah, there we go.
Kari Foster It looks like we had just over a quarter of you say that it doesn't support all of your necessary business processes. Another 30% saying, difficult to use, doesn't handle everything we trade. This is very much in line with what we saw from our survey results, and we'll be talking about shortly. If we could go to the next slide, please. How the ETRM/CTRM Supports Needs: Are ETRMs and CTRMs doing their jobs? We'll dive a little bit deeper into that. Next slide, please. Our survey asked, what was the main need that drove the decision to use an ETRM system? 70% transitioned to a new system to replace good old spreadsheets. How many of you have started out using spreadsheets or some other type of outdated system, which could be another vendor system. It could be in-house built. However, to juxtapose against that, 91% of respondents don't feel their current system supports all necessary business processes or handles everything they trade. Another 37% felt that it was too difficult to use or too slow. Now I ask the panel, what do you think about these challenges that are clearly so prevailing with many ETRM systems? Sameer, I'd love to start with you on that.
Sameer Soleja From a vendor perspective, selling ETRM systems has for a long time been a feature battle. You'll get an RFP with, I think I remember one with 600 features on it. And you need to answer how the product does all those things. And the truth is, nobody's going to build a product that does all those things. But then I can totally see why it's necessary as well. So there's a chicken and egg problem here. But yeah, I think that's fascinating.
Michael Barrett Yeah, I think that we see the exact same thing from the overall client support side of things. It's important to make sure that you're doing things in the right way for your business. Sometimes pushing a vendor to do an enhancement, get that feature in to your ETRM is not the path that you really want to follow. The vendor may or may not be prepared to do that and do that well. Really taking a lens of what is the best fit system for me from an ETRM perspective and then really looking towards other avenues to augment and support that system, get the best functionality you can possibly build. Again, Sameer talked proof of concepts in Power BI and power apps, it's very easy to build your unique functionality off to the side when you're using the ETRM well.
Jeff Davies I’d jump in and say, the reality is change is hard in our individual life, and it's even harder in an organization's life. It may change over my lifetime, but spreadsheets are still the most popular software on the planet, most users on the planet. But as you think about data sets getting bigger, data sets getting more complex, I think spreadsheet-based systems in particular, introduce risk into your organization rather than reduce risk into your organization. It's just really hard and challenging to manage the amount of data that you're dealing with and do it with speed, do it accurately inside of a spreadsheet. So risk management systems are meant to reduce risk, and I think as things get more and more complex, spreadsheet-based systems, in particular, introduce risks.
Kari Foster Steve, anything to add?
Steve Harwitz Yeah, I agree with that completely, that if you can get out of spreadsheets, do it, get out of VBA and the fragility of macros and, again, outdated ways of doing processes, then that's certainly something to look at. I think the telling number is 91% of respondents don't feel that their system supports everything they want to do. What do you want? I think when you talk an enterprise risk system that potentially could have everything and how many different modules would have to be in place, I think it's more important for end users to look at what their pain points are and to say, Okay, am I covered 80% by this system? Am I covered 90% by this system? What's missing? When I choose a new ETRM or I choose a new process to see if I can get those pain points alleviated as best as possible, because I think we're seeing that folks are recognizing that single solutions are difficult.
Kari Foster And this is such a great discussion, and we've just got a little bit more of it to go because I know that we also have some questions from the audience. And so now if we could go to the next slide. So there's a lot here, but we're taking a look at a list of responses when we asked in our survey, what kinds of functionality would you like to see that isn't available to you now? We purposely made this a free form answer in the survey, which is why you see so many different responses here. But there's a clear underlying theme, speed and automation, user friendliness, deal entry, integrations, handling of different instrument types. We also asked this question during the registration for this webinar. There were some responses that were mentioning AI, simple implementation and integration, scenarios simulation. My last question for the panel, what does the future look like for the ETRM/CTRM space, and how should systems evolve to meet evolving needs?
Sameer Soleja I think this illustrates the responses on the other slide where 91% of folks said that systems don't handle everything that they need. I mean, yeah, this is the everything. There's a lot, right? I don't see how that problem gets solved, right?
Michael Barrett Yeah, it's an interesting slide because if you took this into a vendor and say, take our existing system and then make all this happen to it, that's a huge ask. The vendors out there that are what I would consider the most dynamic, like Molecule, have a better chance of flexing to some of these things, but it's still a very, very, very tall order.
Kari Foster Steve, from your perspective. Oh, please go. Continue, Sameer.
Sameer Soleja I was just going to say, so there's 100 vendors in the ETRM space, and all, or almost all, claim to do basically the same thing, which includes pretty much everything on this slide, and we all know that that's not the case. I wonder what there would be to incentivize good behavior on the part of software vendors like us to say, Hey, look, this is what we do. This is what we don't. You should call this other guy if you want this particular feature.
Kari Foster Steve, do you feel like these are on your wish list, or how realistic are these needs?
Steve Harwitz I I think there's a couple of things that stand out in the next steps to how your ETRM integrates with other systems and integrates with other areas in a business. We say speed, but it's really speed and accuracy, right? I think that's... And I shifted a little bit. I'll get back to the other thing. But once we get close to real-time, that's really the dynamic that I think we're heading towards. I think for an end user, you're not going to get everything, but you want to really hit those pain points that maybe you've seen in a previous system for a long time or those errors that come through in Excel, and you just go, well, I got to live with it. Well, you don't necessarily. I think the integration factor is really something that's coming, right? Whether it's connecting to front-end pricing, right? That’s that dynamic pricing idea, or if it's connecting on the back side to an SAP or something in that regards, where it isn't just a stand-alone, something pretty on your desktop, where it really becomes an integral piece of your enterprise software.
Kari Foster Jeff, do you have anything to add?
Jeff Davies Yeah, I'd add, as I think about this, desired functionality is going to be different for every organization. And as we talk about this AI discussion. The one thing that AI now and in the future does provide is the ability to write software yourself. There may be this mindset of, Hey, maybe I can customize my own system easier than in the past. Actually, there was news last night of a finance company that's ripping out Workday and CRM and going to go down that path. But as I think about that movement, if it comes to fruition, is that really your core competency to create and write software? Without as many touch points as a company like Molecule, without as many learnings from having touch points into a number of organizations, can you really build a system that is as holistic as you want to be and really have all those learnings that you get from having touch points across all industries, all commodities, all different risk concerns?
Michael Barrett That's a very interesting point, Jeff, because I have a client who's breached to me, Oh, we're going to build it internally. I hired the guy from this other company who built it for them over there. Well, if I go talk to the other company, they complain about their system all the time. It's a hard challenge and it really needs to go from the focus of, what do I want the system to do to what is the system designed to do well and how can I really capitalize on that. That is the value proposition that we are really trying to get our clients through.
Kari Foster Well, thank you all. This is such a fascinating discussion. We're going to continue it now with some Q\&A, so I'll pass things back over to Ben.
Ben Hillary Excellent. Thank you, Kari, and thank you to the panel for their insights. Really interesting. We will now take questions from the audience. Now, some of you may remember during the registration process, you might have answered one of the boxes asking if you had any questions for the panel. We'll be taking a few of those, and we'll also be taking a few of those which have been asked via the Q&A during the panel. On that note, you can see we have four questions in there already. Do keep asking your questions and do keep upvoting any which are of interest. Firstly, from the registration form questions, throwing this out to anyone on the panel, very interesting one. Can you share any specific examples where rapid market changes have led to significant shifts in risk management approaches? Does anyone want to give quite a practical example there?
Michael Barrett Yeah, I think what we're seeing with climate change, the amount of weather events and the frequency and the strength of weather events is really becoming one of those factors out there. It is really focusing on, I need to have more products to encourage reliability. I need to have more products to protect the inherent price risk. You're seeing new products out there. You're seeing a lot of people ask questions on, is the weather derivative market really developed enough to participate in? Those types of questions that come across are really important for people to get a handle on and really think through how they impact their strategic plan and meet their own targets.
Ben Hillary Excellent. Anyone else want to give that one a pop?
Jeff Davies I have a specific example where when you think of risk, again, I put it in the context of volatility. Volatility can go higher and volatility can go lower. Both of those things interject risk if you're not positioned working correctly and not monitoring those things correctly. There's a bitcoin miner in Texas who was hedging out their power needs and got upside down recently because they basically made a bet on higher volatility, and it turned out to be lower because of just how much battery storage has come into ERCOT recently, which is reducing volatility in power prices. So Measuring these things, having a holistic view on the market, understanding what's happening in the market. You can get caught on both sides of volatility, higher volatility or lower volatility.
Ben Hillary Absolutely. Thank you for that. We'll now shift to one of the questions in the Q&A from the audience. So our number one upvoted question from Kapil. Hi, Kapil. Hope you're doing well. The question from Kapil is, the market is experiencing unprecedented volatility, partly due to the unpredictability of deliveries from renewable sources. What solution do you propose for managing the risks associated with the variability of volume and price in the short term power markets? Who wants to give that one a crack?
Michael Barrett Jeff, it seems like all you. But what our clients are doing, and Jeff just mentioned, battery technology and looking at battery technology and how they can not only invest in and develop that technology, but also how can they enter into capacity agreements along that? What do those capacity agreements look like? How does that serve as a hedge for this risk? Outside of that, it's really looking to do better modeling on this risk and really analyzing what the market risks being provided are and how do you go out and use traditional projects to hedge those. It really comes down to a lot of the factors that we've talked about here, particularly better data, historical data, to have better models.
Ben Hillary Excellent. Thank you for that. Gosh, we are really starting to run out of time. I'm going to take one more question from the Q\&A, and then I've got a good crystal ball question in the back pocket to save for the very end. Let's go to Joseph. Good one there. Okay. One component I'm surprised that didn't show up in the survey, at least it wasn't mentioned, is the number of products needing to be monitored. Not only are you needing to manage the energy component, there are now several environmental products needing to be monitored. Whether or not a company wants to be in the environmental space, they are by default. The environmental products are not standardized and create complexity in risk management. Why do you feel the number of products did not come up in the survey? Do you feel companies have solved this problem or is it not a priority? Who wants to give that one a crack?
Steve Harwitz Well, I think we have such a diversity of products right now, whether that's carbon credits or SAF or biodiesel or the regional credits or SOx and NOx and all these different things. Some of them have formal markets, some of them don't, some of them are coming, some of them show up and then they go away. I think it's hard to put that into the standardized ETRM environment at this point. I think the other thing, and I'm trying to do this fast so we can get on to the next stuff, but I think the other thing is sometimes it falls under different departments. A sustainability group could be handling carbon or could be handling some of these other things where the risk management groups are going, Hey, we can do this for you. But it just hasn't come to our department yet.
Michael Barrett Yeah, I think, Steve, that's really important. I think what we're finding is a lot of our clients are saying, Hey, I'm just getting these for sustainability purposes. I'm going to retire them. That's it. They're just a cost. And really being blind to the fact that they are a traded commodity in a volatile market and the people who are managing them could make different decisions than just to retire them. I do think it's a blind spot for many of our clients in this space.
Ben Hillary Excellent. Well, we've got a very short amount of time. I've got a great question here, and I'm just going to see if the panelists can maybe answer it in one or two sentences each, so your best shot. The question is, what emerging trends should organizations be aware of to prepare for future market shifts and associated risks, effectively. What are the emerging risks, I suppose, that organizations should be bearing in mind?
Sameer Soleja I would say AI and the advantages that it gives your competitors.
Michael Barrett
Yeah, absolutely. You could tie it to AI, but it's really what is the next person doing? Looking at what your peers are doing, what they're focused on, and whether or not they have a better strategy to cannibalize the market than you do, that really becomes the number one risk. At this rate of change, which is the overall topic of this webcast, is… it is going fast and it's hard to keep a pulse on what the next person is doing, what your peers in the industry are doing. Being connected, connecting with experts, going to conferences is a good way to mitigate that. And that was more than two sentences. Sorry.
Jeff Davies I would jump in and say, as I think about the rapidly changing nature of both supply and demand in energy markets, to me, I have concerns over just timing mismatches. As you have timing mismatches on supply–demand, and some of this may be regional or geographic focus. But as you have these mismatches, it's going to inject more volatility in the market.
Ben Hillary Steve, you want to give it to... What can you — it can be really quick.
Steve Harwitz I can be really quick and just say it's about speed and reliability of data. As we get faster and faster and we need that data quicker. AI is going to be there to help, but things are going to keep moving and keep changing. I think that's the overriding thing is that we don't know. We don't know what that next issue is going to be.
Ben Hillary Well, that puts us just about out of time. I would really just say a huge thanks to our panel for their insights today and to you, the audience, for joining. The webinar recording will be sent via email in the next two days. If you found it of interest, do please share with your colleagues, do share with your wider network. If Kari, myself, or any of the panel can be of any assistance, do drop us a line or connect via LinkedIn. Again, many thanks, audience, panel, you've been fantastic and wishing everyone an excellent day or evening ahead. Thank you.