Energy Risk Technology Report 2019

The digitisation of the energy space has recently become a hot topic, debated by chief risk officers, board executives and regulators alike. Not only is technology increasing operational efficiencies up and down the value chain but it is transforming business processes, disrupting age-old business models and even re-shaping relationships by introducing new ways for market participants to engage with clients, counterparties and competitors.  

Currently, ‘digitisation’ is often little more than posting a photograph of a hardcopy document. “Putting the same old documents that were on paper onto a screen is not really digitising the business when there’s no additional value creation,” points out one commentator in our blockchain article. Deciding which technologies will best address the challenges of individual firms, now and in the future, is a challenge in itself and requires the ability to see through the early euphoria associated with a ground-breaking technology. 

We shine a light on some of the major uses for these new technologies. In the blockchain article, we look at some of the big projects that are proving the revolutionary capacity of the technology. We also reveal the opinions of CIOs, risk professionals and consultants on distributed ledger and many other technologies in our Energy Risk annual software survey. The pros and cons of robotic process automation and next-generation analytics projects are discussed. We also discuss where the traditional CTRM system sits among all this new technology, considering how automation can reach back-office as well as front-office processes via CTRM software.