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The world of Energy Trading and Risk Management is multifaceted, with each commodity presenting its own unique set of challenges. When it comes to liquid commodities such as crude oil and refined products, managing the intricacies of the market can be an uphill battle due to various reasons such as the high volume, fast-paced nature, complex logistics, diverse contracts, credit and risk considerations, and regulatory compliance. We’ve empowered clients to maximize Endur’s potential in liquid commodities space. Our expert team streamlines operations across front, middle, and back offices, unlocking value for your business.

In this blog, we will delve into some of the challenges that Liquid commodity traders face when it comes to managing their books in a ETRM system. We will also discuss, key functionalities of Endur and how we have leveraged them for our clients to optimize their liquid commodities business in Endur.

Effective Management of the Liquid Value Chain

Endur offers capabilities specifically tailored for the dynamic world of liquid commodities. From managing production forecasts, capturing physical deals to valuing inventory and everything in between, Endur empowers businesses to navigate the complexities of the liquid value chain seamlessly. With our expertise, we aim to educate our clients on how to leverage Endur’s powerful functionalities to optimize their transactional lifecycle, streamline operations, and gain a competitive edge in the market.

Let’s explore the key challenges of managing liquids in ETRM systems and how we assisted numerous clients in leveraging the Endur solution and empower their businesses to thrive in this fast-paced environment.

Production forecasts are crucial in liquid commodity trading, enabling efficient supply chain management, informed trading strategies, and risk mitigation. Integrating production forecasts into ETRM systems empowers companies to make data-driven decisions, optimize operations, and succeed in dynamic energy markets.
We have used Endur’s Data Series module that provides the ability to model and analyze various forecasts and probabilities associated with deals. This has empowered our clients to make well-informed decisions and manage positions effectively.
With global variance in equalization calculations rules, crude production forecasting can be hard to model with Endur’s OOB capabilities but with customizations that is also possible.
Liquids market participants engage in diverse contractual structures for transportation and storage, including take-or-pay agreements and throughput arrangements.
Furthermore, these contracts are complex to manage due to factors such as long-term volume commitments, price fluctuations, diverse shippers, and regulatory compliance.
The interconnected infrastructure, force majeure events, and the long-term nature of contracts further add to the intricacies, requiring expert oversight and strategic planning to ensure smooth operations and adherence to contractual obligations.
We have helped several of our clients use Endur’s customizable contract management modules to accommodate various complex contract structures in different regions, ensuring precise contract settlements and reducing contractual risks.
In liquid commodity trading, counterparties can include various entities, from large corporations to financial institutions and small traders. For some of the medium and small trading shops, managing credit risk in liquid commodity trading presents significant challenges due to counterparty risk, short-term contracts, and logistics complexities.
With a high volume of transactions occurring rapidly, assessing the creditworthiness of diverse counterparties becomes crucial to mitigate potential losses.
Additionally, short-term contracts demand constant credit evaluations and adjustments to accommodate changing market conditions, while intricacies in logistics pose logistical challenges in ensuring timely and efficient deliveries.
To navigate these complexities successfully, market participants must employ robust credit risk management strategies, real-time monitoring tools, and seamless integration with logistics operations to optimize their trading activities and financial stability.
We empower clients with Endur’s robust credit management tools for better risk mitigation, including setting credit limits and enforcing blocks based on credit exposure. Our expertise enables accurate OTC derivatives credit valuation using overnight index swap rates, while also computing weighted credit exposure by facility, legal entity, and maturity bucket for comprehensive risk analysis.
Managing liquid commodity trading is a complex task, especially when dealing with the diverse contract structures and intricate pricing strategies involved. The wide range of contract types, each with unique terms and specifications, demands a flexible system.
Additionally, the complexity of pricing strategies, influenced by factors like geopolitical events and supply-demand dynamics, requires sophisticated deal modeling and real-time deal analysis within the ETRM system to ensure accurate pricing and risk management.
Using Endur’s flexibility in deal modeling allows for customization of pricing and payment formulas for physical deals, providing traders with comprehensive and tailored solutions.

Endur Liquids Management Lifecycle

High Impact

Medium Impact

Little/No Impact

Out of Scope

Logistics complexities in liquid commodity trading stem from high trading volumes, geographical dispersion, and diverse transport modes. Managing the movement of significant quantities across multiple regions and modes of transportation demands efficient planning and coordination.
Moreover, seasonal demand patterns introduce fluctuations in transportation requirements, while adherence to specific quality standards during handling and storage is crucial to meet contractual obligations and ensure commodity integrity throughout the supply chain.
Endur’s logistics and scheduling capabilities go beyond traditional systems. With the ability to handle regrades, blending, and redirection of deliveries, our clients have effectively managed changing market conditions and optimize their supply chain.
ETRM systems need to integrate with multiple market data sources to access real-time and historical market data, including commodity prices, indices and other relevant information.
Consolidating and analyzing data from different sources can be challenging. Furthermore, liquid commodity pricing complexity arises in markets with less liquidity, where trader marks play a crucial role in determining accurate pricing due to limited buyer and seller availability.
Ensuring effective decision-making for traders requires a flexible and robust ETRM system capable of seamlessly managing and integrating data from various sources.
For non-liquid markets, Endur allows modeling of market values, though stress testing in such cases may require careful consideration.
Our clients have achieved their goals through our expert utilization of Endur’s capabilities, which include accurate fee modeling and the flexibility to replace default MTM pricing with more precise benchmarks based on intended sale or inventory locations.
Leveraging the Mark to Intent (MTI) approach within Endur, we provided multiple deal views, catering to the specific needs of various stakeholders within their organization.
Capturing actual volumes into a system for liquid commodities presents complex challenges due to data accuracy, timing, and integration from multiple sources.
Timeliness is crucial to accommodate real-time and intraday trades accurately. Integrating data from diverse sources, handling quality specifications, and reconciling physical delivery and inventory management add further intricacy.
A robust system, along with effective data governance and validation processes, is essential to ensure accurate risk management and decision-making in the dynamic world of liquid commodity trading.
While some customization may be needed based on the business model, for one of the biggest pain points where the actual tickets need to be automatically associated to the right deal, Endur offers out-of-the-box functionality to autolink movement tickets.
The liquid commodity inventory valuation in ETRM systems is complex due to dynamic pricing, different valuation methods, and quality adjustments. Fluctuating market prices and the need to consider specific quality specifications add intricacy to the valuation process.
Additionally, reconciling valuation with actual volumes after blending/regrading products, managing storage costs, and complying with regulatory requirements further contribute to the challenges of accurately valuing liquid commodity inventory within ETRM systems.
We have empowered our clients with effective inventory management solutions by harnessing the capabilities of Endur.
Through our expertise, we have guided them in implementing various inventory valuation methods, such as FIFO, LIFO, LCM adjustments, spot adjustments, and market value inventory, ensuring accuracy and efficiency in their operations.

Master the Liquid Value Chain with Value Creed

With extensive experience in Endur implementation and optimization, Value Creed is committed to empowering our clients with the knowledge and expertise they need to thrive in the liquid commodities market. With Endur’s cutting-edge capabilities and our tailored solutions, our clients can unlock new opportunities, streamline operations, and make informed decisions. Partner with us today to discover how we can help transform your business into a dynamic and thriving force in the industry.

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Risk Management in Today's Business Landscape

Energy Trading and Risk Management companies operate in a complex ecosystem, navigating through volatile energy markets, complex trading strategies, and ever-changing geopolitical and regulatory landscapes. As they seek to capitalize on opportunities and mitigate potential threats, risk management emerges as the guiding beacon towards managing a sustainable growth and ability to win or survive in the marketplace.

In this blog, we aim to provide insights that highlight key activities that Endur users can take to manage their risk profile systematically – not only for today but also to keep up with the demands of the marketplace.

Identifying and Assessing Risks: A Crucial Step in Risk Management

The pursuit of an optimal platform for navigating the complexities of energy markets and skillfully managing risks seems to be a perpetual endeavor for ETRM companies. We bring our industry-specific Risk Capability Maturity Model (CMM) to help clients benchmark and refine their risk processes and measures. By leveraging this model, organizations can gain a comprehensive understanding of their risk management capabilities and identify opportunities for enhancement. Our expert team then configures Endur per the CMM’s guidelines, aligning the solution with their evolving risk management needs and improving their risk strategy in the desired direction.

Leveraging Technology for Enhanced Risk Management

With our extensive Advisory and Technical experiences in the ETRM industry, we have demonstrated how companies can gain a distinctive edge by harnessing Endur’s out-of-the-box capabilities for enhanced systematic risk management.

Delving into specific areas where Endur offers unique advantages, companies can streamline operations and navigate complexities with our tailored solutions, ensuring success in energy markets.

  • Endur's risk management comprises an extensive suite of ~ 600 pricing models and ~ 40 simulation models out of the box which means most of the risk modeling scenarios are configurable in the system.
  • Utilizing Endur simulation engine such as the VaR module, the risk modeling approach offers enhanced flexibility to create custom risk models that precisely align with the organization's trading strategies and business needs.
  • Utilizing the Hedge Pak module in Endur, portfolio-specific configurations enable optimization of risk strategies for individual trading entities.
  • RiskPak provides advanced scenario analysis capabilities, empowering users to gain valuable insights into how diverse market conditions and potential risk scenarios may impact portfolios.
  • APM in Endur facilitates seamless integration with trading operations, enabling real-time risk monitoring. This empowers traders and risk managers to make prompt and informed decisions, supported by customized risk reporting, dashboards, and visualizations that precisely cater to clients' risk management needs.

Maximize Business Returns with Tailored Risk Strategies

After identifying the key areas within Endur, we empowered organizations with customized approaches that optimized risk management decisions and unlocked opportunities for sustained success. Our tailored solutions were designed to align with the specific needs and challenges of each client, ensuring that risk management strategies were well-integrated into their existing workflows. Let us explore a few of our tailored approaches that we successfully implemented for our clients.

Credit Risk Measures

With our experience, organizations gain valuable insights into counterparty risk profiles, credit limits, potential losses, and credit risk concentrations, empowering informed decisions and effective risk mitigation.

Precision in Risk Models

 Our solution leverages advanced risk analytics tools, customized to meet specific business needs, allowing for a granular examination of counterparty exposures and optimization of risk management strategies.

Real-Time Visibility for Timely Responses

Our expertise in configuring risk capabilities provides organizations with real-time visibility into credit risk exposure, facilitating prompt responses to market dynamics and counterparty developments.

Empowering Effective Risk Management

Through tailored risk reporting and an intuitive user interface, our solution helps organizations interpret complex credit risk data, leading to more informed and effective credit risk management decisions.

Proactive Identification of Concentration Risks

Our approach assists organizations in proactively identifying potential credit risk concentrations, ensuring proper diversification and minimizing potential losses.

A Robust Risk Management Framework

With our tailored approach, organizations gain a robust risk management framework, fostering confidence and resilience in navigating the energy trading landscape.

Safeguarding Portfolios with Foresight

We guide organizations to safeguard their portfolios, making informed risk management decisions with foresight and readiness for any market challenges.

Transform Risks into Opportunities with Value Creed

Value Creed’s unwavering dedication to fully harnessing the capabilities of the Endur ecosystem and seamlessly integrating with other scheduling platforms ensures that we persistently deliver customized solutions that provide tangible value. The positive outcomes of these efforts are reflected in our clients’ experiences, where they have witnessed improved operational efficiency, a decrease in manual workload, and heightened reliability in their scheduling processes. By partnering with Value Creed, companies can transform logistics management into a strategic advantage, navigate industry complexities, make data-driven decisions, and stay ahead in the fast-paced energy market.

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Navigating through the Challenges of Scheduling Process

Managing the scheduling and logistics for liquid hydrocarbons, gas, and other bulk commodities is a complex undertaking. Moreover, these processes often tend to be riddled with manual interventions that can lead to an increase in errors & unexpected issues. With the increasing number of spot trades, and increased granularity & complexities and the need for accurate pipeline tracking, companies face numerous challenges such as:

Optimize Logistics Management for Enhanced Profitability

We have achieved tangible value for our clients through integrating Endur with upstream systems. Leveraging advanced scheduling modules such as cMotion, gMotion, and pMotion, we successfully optimize operations to address logistics challenges. If you’re seeking operational optimization in logistics management, consider the following examples of our expertise to assist you in achieving your goals.

Traditional ETRM systems often struggle to keep pace with frequent changes in cargo scheduling due to evolving market conditions. We have successfully leveraged Endur’s cMotion functionality to bring significant value to our clients. By harnessing cMotion, we enable continuous tracking of Balanced Actual Volume (BAV), providing real-time visibility into cargo volumes and balances, and optimizing their cargo scheduling. This level of visibility empowers companies to adapt quickly to evolving market conditions and capitalize on optimal opportunities.
Drawing on our extensive experience in configuring Endur’s scheduling modules, we have assisted energy companies in overcoming the daunting task of managing large amounts of pipeline data and calculating deal economics. Our clients are now able to streamline the processing of pipeline data, resulting in simplified logistics management for liquids, gas, and other bulk commodities. This reduction in complexity ensures accurate calculations of deal economics, enabling them to make informed decisions and optimize their operations.
Drawing on our extensive experience in configuring Endur’s scheduling modules, we have assisted energy companies in overcoming the daunting task of managing large amounts of pipeline data and calculating deal economics. Our clients are now able to streamline the processing of pipeline data, resulting in simplified logistics management for liquids, gas, and other bulk commodities. This reduction in complexity ensures accurate calculations of deal economics, enabling them to make informed decisions and optimize their operations.
To prevent data loss and save time on reconciling information between Endur and ERP systems, it’s important to have accurate financial processes in place. This includes efficient book closing and timely financial reporting. Endur’s Settlement Desktop module offers “custom bridges” that help establish connections between the systems, simplify the overall system structure, improve error handling, and most importantly enable real-time exporting of document data.
Our customized solutions leverage Endur’s transaction management platform to maximize the potential of equity production activities for energy companies. We help enhance efficiency in production scheduling-related activities, including owner interest and imbalance management, marketing arrangement coordination, volume allocation, and seamless connectivity to transportation or storage systems. Through our tailored approaches, we optimize processes, improve coordination, and drive operational efficiency in the dynamic energy market.

Empowering Energy Logistics with Value Creed's Endur Integration Solutions

In our quest to deliver optimal solutions to clients relying on Endur for their scheduling processes, we have harnessed the power of various components within the Endur ecosystem. With Endur’s built-in functionalities like CMotion, GMotion, and PMotion, coupled with the ability to customize them to suit specific business requirements, we have created solutions that directly add value to our clients’ operations.

Moreover, by utilizing Openlink’s XML-based Connex Gateway, we have seamlessly integrated Endur with other scheduling platforms, such as pipeline EBBs, Railcar Logistics systems, and Truck ticketing systems. These integrations have yielded a host of benefits for our clients, empowering them to effectively manage their scheduling within Endur:

Enabling Agile Decision Making through Distributed Job Processing

Efficiency is the cornerstone of effective decision-making. Our approach included employing distributed job processing on grid servers, reducing latency to nearly one-third. The result is faster decision-making, empowering our clients to respond quickly to market changes and seize opportunities.

Streamlining Volume and Delivery Management

Empowering our clients with tools for efficient volume and delivery management is vital. Customized scheduling workbench enables the creation and modification of nominations, accommodating various views and business requirements. This flexibility streamlines the management of delivery locations, volume adjustments, and Best Available Volume updates.

Achieving a Comprehensive Financial View from Scheduling Activities

Ensuring a comprehensive view of financial aspects is crucial for effective energy logistics. We achieve this by ensuring seamless connectivity between nominations, pipelines, zones, locations, and valuation pools. This integration enables accurate settlement calculations, reflecting exposure and financial implications.

Simplifying Logistics with Automation

Automation can significantly reduce manual effort and the risk of errors. Our integration expertise allows us to simplify the process of adding nominations by automatically creating legs on trades. This efficient automation streamlines the logistics process and increases operational reliability.

Stay Ahead in the Competitive Energy Landscape with Value Creed

Value Creed’s unwavering dedication to fully harnessing the capabilities of the Endur ecosystem and seamlessly integrating with other scheduling platforms ensures that we persistently deliver customized solutions that provide tangible value. The positive outcomes of these efforts are reflected in our clients’ experiences, where they have witnessed improved operational efficiency, a decrease in manual workload, and heightened reliability in their scheduling processes. By partnering with Value Creed, companies can transform logistics management into a strategic advantage, navigate industry complexities, make data-driven decisions, and stay ahead in the fast-paced energy market.

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Challenges in Managing Complex Enterprise Applications and On-Premises Infrastructure

ETRM applications such as Endur is a highly complex application that plays a central role in a company’s vital business operations. Managing complex enterprise applications necessitates specialized expertise to maximize their potential and ensure optimal performance.

Scaling an on-premises infrastructure entails substantial downtime and disrupts the workflow of application users. Ensuring seamless integration and interoperability between different applications, databases, and technologies while safeguarding on-premises hardware, network, and physical elements can be expensive and reliant on human intervention.

Moreover, keeping complex enterprise applications and on-premises infrastructure up to date with patches, bug fixes, and upgrades is a continuous task. It requires careful planning, testing, and coordination to minimize disruptions and ensure the entire system remains stable and compatible with other components. This leads to setting up and expanding or upgrading components within one’s domain which is complex and pricy.

Benefits of Migrating to the Cloud

Support Landscape and SLAs ​

Everyday operational challenges such as end-of-day (EOD) processes, application performance, and critical job failures become less tangible. Additional support is available to promptly resolve issues raised by the business while adhering to minimal service level agreements (SLAs).

User Base ​

By identifying geographical locations, defining system uptime expectations, and considering the number of users connecting to Endur, a more rigorous and secure IAM (Identity and Access Management) control can be established.

Data Analytics Landscape

Relying on Endur transactional data for reporting and analytics purposes, such as VaR calculations and Risk Reporting tools, becomes significantly more streamlined and manageable as the occurrence of points of failure is minimized.

Code Customizations​

The frequency and intricacy of managing code changes to accommodate evolving business requirements are streamlined. Deployments can be automated, and maintaining a chronological record of updates for any component of the application becomes straightforward.

Future Needs​

Assessing the impact of upcoming short-term integration needs between Endur and other systems, and determining the necessary customizations for seamless interfacing becomes straightforward. Configuring the requirements of each individual application to connect to the cloud is consolidated at a single endpoint with cloud migrating.

Factors to Consider when Choosing Between Self-Owned and 3rd Party-Owned Cloud

IaaS (Infrastructure-as-a-Service) and PaaS (Platform-as-a-Service) are two cloud computing models offering different infrastructure and application management levels.

IaaS provides virtualized computing resources, giving users control over infrastructure and application environments. PaaS, on the other hand, abstracts infrastructure complexities, offering a platform for application development, deployment, and management without worrying about underlying infrastructure details. 

Ultimately, the choice between IaaS and PaaS depends on the business’s specific requirements and preferences.

Consider the following factors when choosing the most suitable cloud solution for your business needs:

Self-owned (IaaS)

3rd Party-owned (PaaS)

Data Hosting

Control your data hosting – cloud subscription and geography, tighter security and more control over various component of the infrastructure.

Cloud subscription and geography are controlled by the Cloud Provider and you have much lesser control over the customization individual components of the cloud.

Custom Code Support

Tighter control and security on enhancements, bug fixes, and deployments with seamless integration with CI/CD processes.

Custom code hosting on PaaS servers necessitates extra configuration between client and provider, increasing reliance on PaaS for CI/CD integration and ensuring a graceful deployment.

Integration

Easy integration with Endur, ERP, supply chain management (SCM), production scheduling, financial reporting tools, and datalakes.

Additional connections must be built with hosted infrastructure to communicate to PaaS provider to integrate these applications.

Maintenance & Security

Automated Endur maintenance and monitoring using inbuilt cloud features and tighter control of application security.

Dependency on PaaS provider like – SLA for maintenance, customization, and less control of application security.

Compliance & Auditing​

Configured based on SOX compliance and auditing requirements.

Dependency on PaaS support to cater to SOX compliance and auditing.

Cost Consideration

Provides the flexibility to migrate your software licenses, as-is with minimal or no modifications required, ensuring a smoother migration process to the cloud without repurchasing them.

May require license optimization for your current license or re-architecting your applications to align with the platform’s usage model, potentially leading to cost increases or license adjustments.

Comprehensive Cloud Services Offered by Value Creed

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Ensure Optimal Energy Portfolio Management

A study conducted by the European Commission estimated that by leveraging real-time data and advanced analytics, the energy industry could achieve energy savings of up to 10%. When managing a diverse portfolio of energy assets, it is essential to have real-time visibility into the performance and market conditions for energy traders and asset managers to monitor their energy positions and make timely decisions, mitigating risk effectively.

Active Position Manager (APM) offers traders and risk managers an interactive and highly customizable position reporting tool, allowing them to track real-time positions with scenario analysis and drill-down capabilities. The recent version of Active Position Manager (APM) offers significant advantages over previous versions, as it provides better filters, pivots, a wider range of result sets, and enhanced robustness, alleviating relying on non-customizable Real-Time Position (RTP) monitoring in Endur.

Let’s dive into this blog to explore how you can enhance your trading decisions by leveraging the essential features of APM and discuss the significance of making customizations to maximize their potential, ultimately ensuring profitable business outcomes.

Enhance Real-time Visibility with the Key Features of Active Postion Manager

In the realm of trading and risk management, having real-time visibility is key. Traders and risk managers need to stay proactive, identifying and addressing any potential issues that may arise in monitoring trades, market data, and risk exposure. This will enable them to make well-informed decisions and optimize their trading performance, ensuring they stay on top of their game.

Let’s understand how you can leverage the following features to empower your trading capabilities :

Customized APM Solutions for Trader-Specific Requirements

With our extensive expertise in Endur, we are well-equipped to assist you in customizing APM according to your specific trader requirements. This ensures a personalized and efficient trading experience tailored to your needs. Recognizing the significance of aligning APM with the unique workflows and decision-making processes of traders, we specialize in customizing APM’s features, dashboards, and analytics to meet our clients’ specific requirements, ultimately maximizing the potential of their businesses. Here are a few examples of the customizations we have successfully implemented for our clients:

Standard results - MTM, Delta, Positions

Pivots and filter criteria for LNG lifecycle

APM Services for Gas and Power

Gas Phys Volume Package

Achieve Efficient APM Optimization with Value Creed

With our tailored customizations, we empower traders to optimize their trading activities by leveraging the full potential of APM. Our focus on personalized solutions drives efficiency, enhances decision-making capabilities, and ultimately delivers a superior trading experience for our clients. As your trusted partner, we enable you to capitalize on the latest innovations and explore untapped opportunities in this domain.

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