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Asia awardsOctober 2012

c o m m o d i t y r i s k m A n A g e m e n t & t r A d i n g

2012 Energy Risk

Energy Risk’s annual Asia awards, now in their fifth year, honour innovation and achievement in Asian energy derivatives markets. A ceremony for the winners was held in Singapore on September 26

technology House of the year, AsiaAspect Enterprise Solutions

says Steve Hughes, president and chief executive. “With our product, you get your real-time profit and loss, value-at-risk and exposure calculations,” he says.

According to users, cost is another strong point of Aspect’s product. Because AspectCTRM is offered on a ‘software-as-a-service’ (Saas) basis, clients aren’t burdened with large consultancy fees and installation costs: there is no need for the client to pay for a server installation as all the processing is done off-site by

Aspect. As a result, Aspect can offer its services to mid-sized clients that may have previously been priced out of buying CTRM software.

“That’s probably the main reason [cost] why we choose Aspect,” says one senior risk management employee at an Asian crude trader. “The cost of start-up for us was very low because it follows the Saas model. We were previously using spreadsheets but with this software, it’s like night and day. We have transparency across the organisation, everybody sees the same numbers and everything updates at the same time,” he says.

In addition to cost, another key factor behind Aspect’s success in Asia

is the speed of its implementation. With AspectCTRM, standard installation can be completed in weeks, as opposed to the 18-month to two-year time horizon common with some software installations, says Hughes.

In recent times, Asia has become increasingly important for commodity traders and to ensure new clients can be set up to run AspectCTRM as soon as possible, developments are under way by Aspect to shorten the duration of implementation and to improve the functionality of the software. Aspect is currently working on an initiative called Aesthetics, which aims to reduce the implementation time of AspectCTRM from two weeks to as low as a few days – making it by far the fastest implementation of a CTRM system available on the market.

In the past 12 months, Aspect has also added functionality for physical operations and shipments for oil. With AspectCTRM’s new shipment workbench, users can track physical shipments and inventory levels and see the impact those have on profit and loss. Aspect expects to extend its CTRM capabilities in the future by adding support for blending optimisation and greater support for metals to improve its offering as a multi-commodity product.

“The biggest trading organisations in the world were previously using a ‘rear-view mirror’ for their operations. With our system they now have a current view,” says Hughes. ■Te

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Aspect Enterprise SolutionsTechnology House of the Year, Asia

Asia awards

Maintaining a competitive advantage through the use of cutting-edge technology is crucial for

today’s energy trading companies and also critical for compliance, with new regulation requiring effective monitoring of risk in real-time. Through its AspectCTRM suite, Aspect Enterprise Solutions offers its clients an effective and economical system for measuring, monitoring and mitigating real-time risk, which is why is takes the title of Technology House of the Year, Asia in the Energy Risk 2012 Asia awards.

Founded in 1999, Aspect provides web-based solutions for market data/analytics, forward-curve building and commodity trading risk management (CTRM). By offering these products through cloud technology, Aspect has been able to penetrate previously untapped markets and improve access to CTRM software. Within Asia, Aspect achieved 14% growth in the number of AspectCTRM users over the past 12 months. The number of users in Asia currently stands at 635 from 147 companies.

AspectCTRM prides itself on being the only multi-commodity, web-based, risk management solution currently on the market. With it, companies are able to access multi-commodity data, analytics, and risk and operations management on the same platform. The firm also stresses that it is currently the only CTRM system that can integrate market data in real-time.

“Our system has the unique selling point of being the only one that provides real-time market data integrated into CTRM software. None of our competitors do that,”

With our product, you get your real-time profit and loss, value-at-risk and exposure calculationsSteve Hughes, Aspect Enterprise Solutions

Steve Hughes

october 2012 reprinted from energy risk