How Can You Digitalise Commodity Trading to Boost Revenue and Efficiency?

Navigating the complex landscape of commodity trading can be challenging. With volatile global markets, the intricacies of geopolitics, and rising demands for environmental, social, and governance (ESG) compliance, companies need transparency, agility, and efficiency to succeed. But all too often, they’re held back by legacy technology.

Digital transformation is revolutionising commodity trading, making it more efficient, transparent, and customer-centric. With the integration of holistic platforms, embedded generative AI, and centralised data sources, technology is at the forefront of this change, providing commodity traders with a competitive advantage.

How legacy technology, manual processes, and data silos are impacting commodity trading

Commodity markets face some of the biggest challenges unique to their sector. Traders need to understand the geopolitical landscape and how it impacts market volatility. They need to evaluate risks, costs, and margins while also ensuring that commodities meet regulations concerning human rights and sustainability. Moreover, the transition to sustainable energy affects costs, requires companies to actively track and report on their carbon emissions, and can influence the outcome of a deal.

Having real-time insight into what’s happening with individual trades and across the market is invaluable. And that’s why digitalisation is so important. Legacy technology is inefficient, costly to maintain, and difficult to patch and upgrade. Disjointed systems and manual processes leave data in siloes, with no central visibility. This hampers staff efficiency and limits collaboration, which is crucial for sharing information that helps in understanding customer needs and driving business success.

“They need to spend time learning how staff works and what their pain points are. It’s important to relate those challenges in a way that stakeholders understand – for example, that investing in fixing them will ultimately save costs and improve productivity,” further explained Walker.

Revolutionising commodity trading with digitalisation

Commodity trading is being transformed by technology that integrates all front- and back-office systems to create a single source of truth and streamline operations with intelligent workflows. Stakeholders across the value chain, including customers and counterparties, can benefit from self-service portals that make the same insights accessible to everyone and promote a customer-centric experience.

“Salesforce is designed to help people do their job well. We looked at real user pain points and created a holistic platform to address these multifaceted needs,” said Walker. “It’s a flexible solution that supports a ‘think big, start small, scale fast’ mindset – traders can experiment to make it work for them without worrying about things breaking.”

Here’s how it can make commodity trading more efficient, cost-effective, and customer-centric:

1. Improving transparency and communication

Centralising the customer and counterparty experience on one platform unlocks greater transparency and improves communication. This setup reduces the need for traditional communication methods like email, streamlines interactions, and maintains a comprehensive record accessible to all parties involved. 

2. Enhancing service efficiency

Centralised customer information can make your contact centre more efficient and empower agents to have personalised, relevant conversations across any channel with full visibility of the customer’s history.

3. Centralising information in one hub

A unified platform provides a 360-degree view of your business operations, making all relevant information accessible in one place. Traders, middle office, and back-office teams all have a unified view of each customer during trade, which means better customer service and higher rates of counterparty satisfaction.

“Giving traders visibility of history, current market information, and AI next-best actions will help them to get the best outcome for everyone involved in the trade,” further said Walker.

Capturing data on successes and failures also provides valuable learning opportunities, helping you refine business strategies.

4. Optimising asset management and field operations

Streamlining asset management and field operations through automation and standardised processes not only boosts efficiency but also enhances staff productivity and safety across the trading ecosystem. This approach minimises human error and supports compliance and risk reduction through a culture of transparency and data sharing.

5. Making data-driven decisions, not assumptions

Advanced analytics and robotic process automation (RPA) elevate market trend analysis and operational efficiency. You can easily connect multiple systems without duplicating data or needing to switch between screens and systems to find the right insights.

Data visualisation tools allow users to customise how they view data, making it easier to digest and act upon, supported by a single source of accurate, real-time data. Generative AI is a game-changer for decision-making. It can summarise conversations and provide relevant contextual data so decision-makers don’t feel overwhelmed. It can also interpret graphs and charts in simple terms, allowing staff to understand business data without needing expertise in data science.

6. Simplifying ESG compliance

As companies face increasing pressure to demonstrate sustainability, solutions that facilitate the tracking and management of environmental goals are crucial. Integrating data from various sources helps in accurately tracking emissions and forecasting and mitigating risks.

“Companies leading the way in ESG have a competitive advantage,” said Walker. “Customers are choosing to trade with companies with lower carbon footprints, so having up-to-date insights that demonstrate sustainability credentials can help win more business.”

Meet the commodity trading companies seeing real impact with Salesforce

Salesforce is having a big impact on commodity trading companies, and key metrics such as customer satisfaction, employee productivity, and operational efficiency are soaring as a result. Organisations have reported more lead volumes, better win rates, and higher revenues while reducing costs across sales, service, marketing, and IT. They’re also more agile. They can onboard new employees faster, accelerate new releases, and speed up decision-making.

Shell is one of many companies that saw a significant increase in customer satisfaction with Salesforce. It launched a self-serve portal, which acts as the main hub for customer interactions. All the information a customer needs to transact with Shell is surfaced in the portal. They can access it 24/7 and browse personalised, relevant content. The sales team also use data visualisation tools so they know which leads and customers to focus on, helping the team effectively organise their efforts.

Another company seeing great results with Salesforce is bp. In addition to boosting employee productivity through better collaboration, it’s saving contact centre staff an estimated 2,500 to 4,000 hours with AI-generated work summaries. This helps teams understand customer needs without having to sift through multiple data sources, giving them more time to build strong customer relationships.

Embrace the future of commodity trading to boost revenues, reduce costs, and streamline operations

Digital transformation is reshaping the commodity trading sector by offering solutions to overcome complexity, boost efficiency, and sharpen your competitive edge. It not only centralises data in a secure way, but it also makes it actionable and understandable across the organisation. And with customer portals and collaboration tools, it’s easy to share insights and capture key information from conversations automatically. 

These digital solutions are designed to make life easier for real people every step of the way — whether that’s colleagues, customers, or counterparties. It automates time-consuming tasks, identifies where to focus to improve profit margins, and fosters a culture of collaboration, transparency, and customer-centricity.