Many organizations still rely on general-purpose tools like spreadsheets to perform critical business processes, including managing their Guarantee of Origin (GO) or Energy Attribute Certificate (EAC) portfolios. While spreadsheets certainly have their place, using them as your primary tool to manage GO or EAC portfolios presents several important drawbacks which may cost your business time and money.
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With the emergence of new technology that allows you to automate processes and boost your output, it is time to step away from general management platforms and move toward purpose-built platforms for GO trade processing and settlement.
Managing your environmental certificates trade process with automation
Automated platforms can help you take your GO trading to the next level, giving you the tools you need to engage in larger and more complex trades. But that’s far from the only reason you should embrace automation. Here are a few more reasons why you should consider switching to a trade process automation platform to manage your GO portfolio:
1. Prevent data loss
The energy certificate trading market is growing at a rapid pace, and it is predicted to continue to do so in the future. As the market grows, so will the scope and complexity of your trades. General-purpose management tools like spreadsheets are not built to handle large and complex datasets, and once your data exceeds the tool’s limit, you’ll start running into program errors and system crashes.
This puts your business at risk of losing essential data and changes that you’ve worked hours on making but haven’t saved yet. Instead, protect your data by investing in a powerful and reliable platform built specifically to handle large volumes of data in the energy trading market.
2. Store all your data on a single platform
Currently, most traders have their data scattered across a variety of trading registries. Each registry uses its own format to store data, and each has its own functionalities. Collecting all the data and then converting it to a clear and readable format is both difficult and time-consuming. Automated platforms can integrate with country-specific registries, such as HKNR (Germany) and GSE (Italy), and API-based registries like Statnett. This means that you now have access to all your data through a single location, making tasks such as inventory management and payment processing far simpler.
3. Save time and money
In our experience, on average, it takes four hours to settle one single trade deal using manual processes (including spreadsheets), which involves engagement from multiple back, mid, and front office employees. By using a post-trading platform that automates key processes, you can speed up the settlement process and free your operators to focus on other tasks, effectively reducing costs and increasing your output.
4. Avoid manual errors
Manual data entry is a complex and time-consuming process. Although operators are thorough, errors can happen and may be difficult to detect when multiple people access and input data manually. Even the most minor inaccuracies can have a major impact on your business.
Fortunately, automation software eliminates the need for manual data input, making it possible to avoid mistakes and reducing the risk of damage to your reputation and potential revenue loss.
5. Collaborate more easily
Processing and settling trades is a collaborative and sophisticated process that requires multiple people working together and communicating across different platforms. To allow teams to collaborate efficiently, information needs to be understandable and easy to access, ideally from a single location. Using tools designed for the GO market allows you to enjoy the benefits of a tool built with collaboration in mind. These tools make it easy to keep track of all processes, giving you the ability to quickly communicate your needs and make better and more informed decisions.
6. Integrate with other systems
General-purpose tools aren’t designed to work with other platforms. Streamline your processes by using a dedicated, purpose-built platform that’s catered to the bilateral nature of the GO trading process. Use a trade process automation platform that can connect seamlessly with other required systems, allowing you to process trades and handle trade settlements in one interface. This helps you drastically reduce processing time and avoid unnecessary work.
7. Discover new opportunities
Manually collecting and processing data on spreadsheets requires the active decision to do so – something happened that made you want to collect and look at the data. What about all of the market opportunities you didn’t know about? All of those missed decisions? By having the data in front of you at all times in one place, without having to manually collect it yourself, you can discover new market opportunities that you may have missed before.
Select the right tool for the right job
Software tools should make your business processes more efficient and relieve you of tedious and repetitive tasks. Unfortunately, general management tools don’t accomplish this goal, often making the process more drawn out and leaving it prone to error.
Using general tools, like ETRMs, may have worked until now, but as the market grows, a tool that is designed especially for the EACs market is essential. CerQlar offers a platform designed to support your productivity with automated features that enable streamlined portfolio management and allow you to capture your trade and portfolio data and make it easily accessible on a single, flexible, scalable platform.
