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As companies suddenly shifted to remote work in early 2020, they faced an array of new challenges. Communication delays and dispersed teams meant a new realignment in the way in-house (and at-home) employees operated.

Yet when it comes to CTRM platforms, any delay can be costly. Our clients turned to us for the solution—and found it in our managed services team.

Making Managed Services Your Advantage

The simple truth is that our managed services experts had adopted the best practices of remote work since well before the pandemic. In fact, their very structure resembles the standard for many newly-remote teams.

A Global Workforce

Our team is distributed across time zones, from Dallas and Houston to Hyderabad, India

Advanced Insights

Over 35 experts offer cutting-edge insights with decades-worth of experience

Prior Expertise

Team members have experience across platforms for both critical and routine issues

These assets made the difference for our clients seeking remote managed services oversight.

The results? A dependable, consistent level of CTRM service, ensuring business continuity throughout the toughest of times.

CTRM Productivity Gains Enable Trading Productivity Boost

See how Value Creed helped a major natural gas production and marketing company upgrade their CTRM, boost productivity and increase efficiency for daily trading activities.

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True Success With Remote Work

Value Creed’s unique dual timezone model allowed our clients to thrive with managed services, no matter their location. What’s more, the 24/7/365 nature of our work made CTRM upgrades, testing services, Business Process Outsourcing, and more easier for our clients when they needed them the most, because of the pandemic and its business implications.

Value Creed’s unique dual timezone model allowed our clients to thrive with managed services, no matter their location.

There’s simply no room for delays in CTRM processes, even when the unexpected happens. Luckily, our managed services team stayed prepared. Their familiarity with working remotely and delivering results continues to make the difference.

See the Success By The Numbers and get in touch to learn how managed services makes the difference in your business:

Explore Key Solutions to Ensure CTRM Journey Success

Learn how CTRM users worldwide engage Value Creed to support these digital forward executive demands.

CTRM UPGRADES

Faster upgrades with minimal disruption to the business users ensure smooth business functioning and lower dollars spend.
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EXPERTISE ON DEMAND

CTRM technical and functional experts are available on-demand to fulfill the needs of the changing business.
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Managed

MANAGED SERVICES

Proactive and reactive services ensure your CTRM is running efficiently and problems are resolved effectively.
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CTRM CLOUD SERVICES

Cloud experts can design, optimize & provide best practice support needed for a successful Cloud Implementation & maintenance.
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TESTING SERVICES

Automated & manual testing services using QMetry integrated with JIRA ensure testing is documented and repeatable.
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BUSINESS PROCESS OUTSOURCING

Business consultants equipped with CTRM knowledge is effectively able to supplement your short term and long term BPO needs.
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Data Smart: Mastering the Data that Matters
Managed Services: Meeting The Challenges In CTRM

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Dual Time Zone Monitoring: Problems Solved Overnight

When your trading day ends, you need to recharge and prepare for another hectic session tomorrow. The last thing you need is to deal with end-of-day processes that fail to initiate. An even worse scenario occurs when your day ends normally but you return the next day to find an empty space on your desk where last night’s EOD reports are supposed to be. How can your company operation without knowing your present exposures, valuation, P&L statement, or mark-to-market position?

The simple but infuriating answer is, you can’t. Not without exposing your firm to undue risk. Your only option may be to wait until last night’s reports can be rerun, missing out on profit opportunities all the while.

Preparing for the Reporting Run

As a Value Creed client, you can rest easy. Just as our U.S.-based team manages your company’s CTRM infrastructure during the day, our overseas team’s day begins when yours ends. Our lead consultant in India starts by preparing the system for EOD reporting:

  • Resolving any issues captured by the grid logs
  • Clearing the grid queues
  • Completing grid schedules and other preliminary processes
  • Verifying the system contains current prices and data needed for the reports

Running the Reports

Our team continues to monitor the entire EOD reporting regimen, so if an anomaly occurs, our technicians can resolve it before it delays the next day’s trading. Team India handles any new grid logs generated during the reporting run, in the vast majority of cases resolving overnight so the overnight reports contain clean, accurate, complete information.

In a few cases, a grid log created during an EOD run will show the system is unable to calibrate a valuation or is missing a price or other data needed to complete a report. Without Value Creed’s Dual-Time-Zone crew on the job, this might lead to a complete shutdown until the next morning when your team arrives. With a Value Creed managed services contract, your employees will never face the prospect of an hours-long rerun report rerun first thing in the morning. Instead, our experts in India will discover the trouble, fetch the missing positions, and re-initiate the reports so they are complete well before the opening bell.

See The Timeline for These Critical Reports

Wondering what this process looks like for your organization and how we support you 24/7/365 by task type and phase? We’ll show you – fill out this request below.

Reporting the Runs

Finally, once the reports are completed and all issues resolved, Value Creed consultants present you a daily docket that includes interval screenshots of our monitoring activities. The report may contain technical, performance, and custom data, as contracted:

  •  Process Management
  •  Grid Schedule 
  • Log Management
  • Server Management
  • Creation and Revision Time
  • Report Status (Successes, Failures, Remediation Progress, etc.)
  • Price Comparisons
  • Exposure Reporting
  • Mark-to-Mark Reports

Let’s discuss how our transparent, accountable, overnight project management team ensures you’re never left in the dark and always have the reports you need to make informed trading decisions.

Value Creed CTRM Managed Services: Cloud Monitoring & Maintenance
3 Ways Value Creed Is In Your Corner: Reason #2

Value Creed's Run Smart Managed Services Start at $3,500 a month

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How To Proactively Overcome Reporting Integration Failure for CTRM Platforms

You may be able to manage and maintain your CTRM infrastructure, application enhancements, and reporting functions in-house, but at what cost? Could your employees be better deployed?  Can you effectively allocate the time and cost to each task? Do you know the status of each project in real-time?

Value Creed has a better way to ensure you maintain oversight of your CTRM process without the investment required to bring in or develop expertise in-house. When you engage Value Creed to handle your CTRM functions, you get the services of a dedicated project manager to serve as a both a lookout and a navigator to safeguard your company’s interests and direct our implementation team’s activities on your behalf.

Transparency

A recent project for a high-profile client illustrates our typical workflow. Based on client instructions, Value Creed calculated the hours spent and achievements logged over previous weeks. We noted time devoted to training, monitoring, and managed services, and presented them in an intuitive dashboard. 

To deliver greater insights and granularity, we broke these figures for each day and charted the data so emerging trends could be identified. Early in the process, the managed services team logged significant time training to learn the client’s specific platform, workflows and reporting requirements. As the project progressed and our personnel became less dependent on the client’s team to explain processes, training time diminished. Conversely, as our employees became proficient with the client’s system, proportionately greater time devoted to value-adding project management and monitoring activities. These improvements are clearly delineated on the dashboard.

Coordination with CTRM/ETRM Vendors

Value Creed’s managed services includes 24/7 report monitoring from two separate time zones to ensure comprehensive coverage and fast response to any failures. Occasionally an issue will arise during our monitoring of end-of-day reporting. When this happens, our team communicates and works with the vendor until the issue is resolved.

As with the client in our case study, you will receive a valuation spreadsheet several times per day detailing key metrics:

  • Runtimes
  • Errors Encountered and Corrective Measures Taken
  • Task Completion Timetable
  • Server Status
  • Queue Exception Log
  • Intraday Exposure, Holdings, Valuations, Trades, etc.

Example Value Creed Run Smart™ Managed Services Client Dashboard

This dashboard is customized to the needs of every client to ensure daily, transparent tracking and reporting of key KPI’s.  Tangentially, this report is supported by End-Of-Day logs and other materials in addition to the high-level dashboard view.

Comfort and Confidence

Value Creed’s open communication and ownership of our work responsibilities gives you the peace of mind of knowing that we are hard at work keeping your systems operable and your maintenance and reporting on schedule. Our transparent, accountable project management includes constantly vigilant leaders who see each repair ticket through to a successful resolution. It also means passing along any insights we glean from working with your team on your projects. Knowledge sharing makes us all smarter, more trusting, and more innovative, as we develop solutions that save time, money, and aggravation.

Contact Value Creed and let’s discuss how our transparent, accountable project management keeps you in control while alleviating the hassle of maintaining hardware, integrating applications, and updating reports.

3 Ways Value Creed Is In Your Corner: Reason #3
3 Ways Value Creed’s In Your Corner: Reason #1

Value Creed's Run Smart Managed Services Start at $3,500 a month

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Delivering Quality Client Services in a Dual-Time-Zone Model

It is the aim of the Value Creed team to outperform the rest by delivering on the promise to distinguish its #CTRM Managed Services by outperforming the competition – even the status quo – by providing excellence.  In this three-part series, the team will step back and share why our services are superior in dimensions beyond technical aptitude.  In this post, the team dives into the role of the “Client Director.” This role is the key to success for long-term partnerships for managed services customers.

When IT teams and business users arrive at work to find price inconsistencies and incorrect reporting from the previous session’s end-of-day processes, it exposes companies to unnecessary risk and limits opportunities for maximized profit. The firm cannot conduct business with confidence until the matter gets sorted out, and that could potentially take the better part of the trading day. Unfortunately, most companies in the commodities trading sphere find themselves short of both the time and expertise they need to deal with CTRM platform malfunctions.

But what if you could rely on an extension of your staff to constantly monitor your CTRM system both during the trading day and overnight? 

Dual Time Zones – Linked by Seamless Communication, Led by Value Creed’s Dedicated Client Directors 

Value Creed does exactly just that, with its unique-in-the-industry dual-time-zone managed services solution. Our dedicated client director is instrumental in providing the personalized, immediate attention our clients need when problems arise overnight. Serving as a project manager liaising with Value Creed’s global team, the client director serves as our client’s representative, interfacing with our global team. 

A recent incident illustrates how the client director assumes control in order to coordinate and ensure problem-solving initiatives are carried out in a timely manner.  Here’s the step-by-step process and benefit of the dual timezone model of managed services. 

  1. By bridging Value Creed’s assets in two hemispheres, the Client Director works with technicians in our Hyderabad, India office as they monitor clients’ end-of-day processes and overnight reporting functions. 
  2. When the team encountered a product price that could not be verified it was unable to determine the validity, they reached out to the Client Director for assistance in issue remediation. Had this anomaly – or any other problem in the run/operate/report cycle – occurred during the trading day, it would have monopolized Clients’ on-staff IT professionals’ time. Since it occurred after-hours, it would have wreaked havoc on the next day’s opening and operating procedures had the firm not partnered with a service provider working in dual time zones.
  3. Value Creed’s client director immediately took charge. She made it clear that client satisfaction was the only objective, and to achieve it, the team would need to go the extra mile until the issue was resolved.
  4. The Client was provided with complete documentation of the issue was provided to the client to minimize the risk of future issues 

Delivering the Modern Approach to CTRM Managed Services

Value Creed’s Hyderabad experts’ early detection and understanding of the potential consequences of the questionable price bought our team critical hours in which to solve the problem. Under our client director’s direction, our Hyderabad Run Smart™ crew works on the system malfunctions as soon as data appears corrupted, processes shut down, or reports fail to initiate. In the case of the mystery price, the Hyderabad team was unable to isolate the problem and interfaced with their US-based colleagues.

Acting under full authority, our project manager marshaled Value Creed’s resources on both continents. Thanks to her strong leadership, our global and US teams work together seamlessly to alleviate the most pressing issues, resetting servers, clearing job queues, and initiating repair tickets. Value Creed’s onshore client support manager contacted the company to apprise its IT team of the system failure and advised on the next steps for moving forward to resolve the issue.

Value Creed escalated the issue until it could isolate the cause and implement a long-term solution. Leveraging people, power and technology in both offices, Value Creed resolved the problem, documented the solution, and closed the case in the time it would have taken other CTRM support firms to discover that something was wrong. This result was made possible by our client director’s refusal to accept less than a complete solution. She made the critical decisions necessary and initiated the processes that ultimately delivered a quick resolution and exceeded the client’s expectations. 


Seamless Teamwork

With a knowledgeable and, committed client director looking out for the Client’s vested interests, Value Creed’s US- and Global-based teams have perfected a collaborative workflow that assures overnight  problems are addressed quickly and solutions are expedited:

  • The Global team identifies an issue and logs a ticket.
  • A client director will formulate a problem-solving strategy, assign resources, and oversee the execution of workflow to resolve the problem.
  • If the Global team cannot solve the issue in short order, a Value Creed team member in the US will be assigned.
  • The US team will gather information from the client and inform them of remedial action taken.
  • With commodities professionals and technical experts in both timezones, Value Creed delivers around-the-clock collaborative solutions at a lower cost than our competitors.

Ready to learn how the dual-time-zone protection can save your company money and maximize your productive trading window? Contact Value Creed today.

3 Ways Value Creed Is In Your Corner: Reason #2
5 Reasons for Choosing Run Smart™ CTRM Managed Services

Value Creed's Run Smart Managed Services Start at $3,500 a month

Interested? Let’s Chat

If there’s one historic certainty in the commodities industry, it’s that everything is uncertain.

This is particularly true today, when an ever-changing business landscape of technology and geopolitics can present unique challenges to those vying to stay competitive. Your CTRM application is a business-critical platform, yet due to its complex nature, finding a reliable and reasonable run-operate support option poses a deceptively simple quandary: Do you outsource, or not?

If a business decides not to outsource, they will often try one of two options:

Option 1: Hire an individual who is already experienced in the application with a high level of capability.

Option 2: Hire and train a recruit with minimal CTRM experience and train them up to the challenge.

The problem with this binary choice is that neither scenario is ideal. Here’s why.

Hiring for Experience

Perhaps the first option seems the more viable of the two. You hire a staff member who already knows the application inside and out, with experience in day-to-day CTRM requirements. On a scale of one to 10, their application capability ranks a 9 or 10.

This person may start out strong, but their capability will likely dull over time due to their myopic focus on your internal use case. They will start to lose the broad frame of reference native to consulting practices, focus on the status quo and, as a result, recommend fewer optimizations for your users. When this happens, user satisfaction – from the front office to the back office – tends to wane for both your experts and users alike.

Building from Scratch

With that in mind, perhaps you decide to avoid the expense and eroding efficiency of a ready-made expert, instead opting to train a specialist internally from a “blank slate.” With the right training, this raw recruit could learn the application precisely the way your company uses it. In turn, you could call upon them to build your own dedicated application support team from the ground up.

While it might seem like a cost savings on the surface, this method is also expensive. Missteps and false starts aside, as your staff’s capability increases with time and experience, these individuals will become highly attractive to consulting agencies that look for the same, rare skill set you invested in them. With the lure of higher pay and benefits elsewhere, this may lead to large amounts of turnover and a never-ending cycle of: recruit, hire, train, lose—recruit, hire, train, lose, repeat.

Now Consider The 3rd Option—Value Creed’s Outsourcing for CTRM Run Operate Support

This leads us back to our original question: Is it better to outsource your CTRM services, or not? As we’ve explored, full-time staffing, whether expert or newcomer, presents a host of challenges that are often problematic or resource-intensive in a way that still doesn’t provide the kind of consideration your business needs.

Value Creed enables you to flexibly define your CTRM Run Operate support needs so your team is optimized, not replaced.

We give you the best of both worlds. You are guaranteed world-class expertise, the effective “Navy Seals” of the industry, that will not decline with time. We continually invest in our experts so they remain innovative in the application across a variety of industries. Plus, you’re not hiring one person across all capabilities front office to the back office – with experience where it matters most to your business.

Our team has deep competency in all of the following functional, business process and technical operations areas of CTRM applications so you can rely on one partner as your business needs evolve.

Variety Of Talent

Accelerating Value, While Lowering Overhead Costs

Your CTRM solution requires top talent from various disciplines. They’re all here – dedicated specifically to making you successful in a unique approach enabling you to tap into the knowledge workers you need, only when you need them.

Risk
Credit
Trading
Logistics
Accounting
Technical

Why Traditional Consulting Falls Short

Traditional consulting usually takes the form of either a per-project basis or a set number of hours towards a goal or task. The former is normally expensive and has minimal flexibility, while the latter has no guarantee of matching your particular problem to a provider with the necessary skills.

Both approaches are ultimately a losing proposition, and neither is designed to support your organizational needs in a way that is both cost-effective and efficient.

You Need Another Way. We Have It.

Value Creed has a business philosophy that is at the core of everything we do. How we are different, what we can do for your business—all of it can be summed up by the five business pillars that best define us:

  • Recruit & Retain Top Talent: Our team is the foundation of everything we do. We find the most knowledgeable experts in the world and leverage their peerless talent to your advantage.
  • Drive Innovation: A company in an ever-changing business environment cannot afford to be reactionary. We strive to ensure that your business has the on-demand tools it needs to become a trend-setter, never a trend-follower.
  • Extend for Excellence: Aligning your CTRM application to your business needs does not always conform to your available bandwidth. We take the guesswork out of integrating front-office operations to back-end systems management. No excuses, just results.
  • CTRM Differentiation: We optimize your CTRM at every point that it impacts your business, ensuring that that we fully coordinate with your executive, business, and technology teams to differentiate you from your competition.
  • Quantify the Results: We provide 24/7/365 access and visibility on every aspect of what we do for you. From system health to addressed anomalies, business reviews to recommended improvements, we seek to build solid business relationships with every deployment.

Signs That Value Creed is Right For Your Business
Of course, business needs vary greatly across the industry spectrum, but if any (or all) of these scenarios sound familiar, perhaps it’s time to outsource your CTRM application support:

  1. A change in the trajectory of your users’ satisfaction. There’s a declining level of
    satisfaction amongst your user base that indicates a lack of innovation, a lack of
    attentiveness, or misaligned priorities amongst your support team.
  2. A shift in your company’s business model with regard to commodity, complexity or size.
    Suddenly you find yourself in need of a different type of support for your CTRM solution.
  3. Speed of CTRM improvements. You’ve determined that you need to change the velocity of how your system is supported, and need to get things up and moving fast.

CTRM Managed Services Priced Right

Our CTRM Managed Services are priced to be competitive, while still giving you access to the best in the business. Keep your team focused on scoping new requirements and managing high-value requirements – leave the repetitive, day-to-day management to us.

Recommended: CTRM End of Day Reporting

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