‘Digitization’ is a key buzzword at the forefront of business decision-makers minds today. Its increasing usage is evidence that businesses should be looking at new ways of managing their internal and external (market-facing) processes. While merchant retail and financial markets have been at the forefront of adopting new digital strategies to transform their businesses, energy and commodity markets have lagged. With the rise of innovations like distributed generation and alternative energy options, energy companies can no longer afford to continue traditional approaches to their business operations. European energy markets provide an example of the digitization of energy with the increasing adoption of algorithmic trading solutions. With the influx of unreliable renewable sources and the retirement of traditional baseload generation, European power markets face growing challenges to balance supply and demand, and without a robust intraday market, the physical power market would be practically unsustainable. Algo solutions, which can monitor near instantaneous price movements, and commit buy or sell orders as necessary, to ensure a balanced market and reduce extreme price volatility, are quickly transforming that market and enabling a low carbon power grid for the European continent.

Companies are most successful in extracting maximum returns from their investments in digitization by: maintaining a laser sharp focus on their areas of expertise, fostering transformation to business processes and working to improve their connection with customers and/or trading partners. Although there is no ‘one size fits all’ roadmap for digitizing and transforming your company and market, any business moving into the digital realm should embrace these guiding principles: Becoming a leader in a market is rarely achieved by merely reacting to change. Market leaders seek opportunity and are continually looking for new methods and technologies to harvest emerging opportunities. Technology is driving change at an accelerating rate […]