Value Creed Develops Ecosystem of Tools to Unlock Value in E/CTRM Solutions
Value Creed believes that E/CTRM solutions form the backbone of modern trading organizations providing the systems of record for trades, nominations, settlements, and market data. These solutions sit within an ecosystem of other key and critical applications such as ERP systems like SAP for finance, market data feeds from ICE, Bloomberg and others, scheduling and pipeline tools for logistics, and analytics platforms like Power BI, Tableau, or Snowflake. This ecosystem serves as the “digital fabric that drives efficiency, compliance, and data-driven decisions in commodity trading,” Javier Vidaurre of Value Creed told me recently. However, setting up and managing this ecosystem comes with significant challenges in terms of “how companies can unlock more value from the massive amounts of data they already hold to drive faster, more efficient decisions.”
To that end, Value Creed is seeking to add value for its customers and differentiate its implementation and support services by creating a suite of tools that pull information from ETRM systems, process that data externally, and then push the results back to avoid bogging down core systems, Value Creed’s Javier Vidaurre told me. “The tools are designed to be part of an official Value Creed offering rather than customer-specific internal solutions that become maintenance burdens,” he said. “While our approach is system-agnostic we have started to build and deploy these tools in conjunction with client’s using Ion solutions.”
The idea is to develop ecosystems of tools around existing ETRM systems to optimize performance without replacing the core systems. Currently it is testing tools with customers in in the area of natural gas scheduling and liquids inventory. Javier explained that “ETRM systems historically function as isolated solutions due to user education gaps and system limitations. The traditional approach of trying to do everything in the ETRM itself often crashes systems when users try to use it for heavy reporting on millions of transactional, logistical, and market data lines,” he told me.
Value Creed’s transformation concept involves leaving ETRM systems to house data and run basic procedures while moving everything else outside to an ecosystem of built-for-purpose tools and applications. “ETRM remains the trusted data store and valuation engine, while AI layered companion tools deliver agility and predictive insights via automated workflows, proactive risk management, personalized decision support, and operational scalability,” Javier told me. This approach helps maximise the longevity and usefulness of implemented ETRM solutions while also helping to make them more agile and faster. This “digital transformation approach treats ETRM systems as data stores while moving heavy operations like reporting and scheduling to external cloud-based tools,” he said.
Value Creed has already developed a scheduling tool for liquid fuels pipeline movements that operates as an accelerator for the ETRM system. It takes trade information, creates schedules with reports, utilizes AI-assisted validations, prompts, optimization, and finally pushes finalized data back to system tables thus avoiding heavy logistical calculations and tariff triggers that would slow down the main system during trading hours. The tool is going live very soon with a customer, he told me.
Value Creed is also already working on an AI/ML applications for commodity routing optimization which is still in early design phase, while other ecosystem tools are actively being implemented including a liquids inventory tool for renewable liquids, crude derivatives and biodiesel movements. This allows real-time viewing of commodity flows without refreshing ETRM system views that would impact traders and month-end processes and it pulls information directly from production or from 5-minute delay copies. It shows users things like volumes in transit, proper inventory levels, and future planning data.
The tools and applications from Value Creed are deployed in the same cloud instance as the customer’s ETRM systems to access secure servers behind firewalls. The web-based tools are accessible through browsers within the network environment and Javier points out that “This architecture matches that of vendors moving their E/CTRM solutions to Amazon-based or other cloud platforms.”
Value Creed has identified that customers often have massive amounts of unused data in ETRM databases. ML tools would analyze millions of data rows to identify cost optimization patterns and routing alternatives – and one initial use case is for airline clients moving fuel through pipelines to airports, he said. For ComTech, this aligns well with a trend that it has seen in which legacy E/CTRM solutions are treated more as data stores and an ecosystem of cloud-based, agile applications developed around it so as to retain the often substantial investment already made in the solution.
“Our approach to developing AI is not “black box” magic. It is built on clear progression: preparing and structuring the data, applying machine learning models to identify trends and optimizations, embedding insights directly into tools that fit into business workflows, and continuously refining models through feedback loops as new data and user behavior emerge. This ensures outcomes are explainable, measurable, and tied directly to business value rather than vague promises,” he told me. “The Value Creed ecosystem approach protects that investment while extending its usefulness. Instead of forcing the core system to do everything, we help clients activate their data, add intelligence, and make better decisions faster. This philosophy aligns with broader industry trends, where E/CTRM systems remain the trusted data store while cloud-based, AI-enabled applications provide the agility and insights modern trading organizations need.”
The tools Value Creed is building are not standalone products but part of the way it delivers its implementation and managed services. Value Creed sees this as differentiating what it does in the market. As Javier puts it – “we don’t just implement E/CTRM platforms, we unlock their full potential.”
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