Have a look at this presentation from November 2017, created and delivered by BCG Platinion's team at the 9th ETOT Summit. Peter Löffler and Thomas Körfer went through the disruptive technologies currently being used or considered in the energy trading sector touching base on key questions: "What are their applications? What impact do we foresee? How should companies be approaching these changes?" For more information about the ETOT series, simply visit www.etotsummit.com

1. November 2017
Energy Trading Operations & Technology Summit
Digitalization of
Trading–Implications
for Back Office and IT

2. 1
Your BCG Platinion team on the 9th ETOT summit
Source: BCG Platinion
Thomas Körfer
Koerfer.Thomas@platinion.com
Manager
BCG Platinion Copenhagen
Peter Löffler
Loeffler.Peter@platinion.com
Managing Director
BCG Platinion Cologne
Specialized in development of concepts
for IT strategies, IT operations, IT
service processes and the management
of high-profile business-critical IT
projects
Typical projects
• Digitization of the supply process
for major customers of a leading
German utility
• Concept and implementation for
virtualization/cloudification for an
energy trading system vendor
Specialized in Big Data architectures
for energy clients. Strong footprint in
energy trading–from cost-cutting up to
best usage of cloud components
Typical projects
• Cloud strategy and data lake setup
for a Norwegian public company
• IT strategy for the trading unit of a
major German utility realizing 30%
cost reduction

3. 2
BCG Platinion—the IT Architects: Founded 2000, has continuously grown and
delivers projects globally to leading companies
Note: BCG Platinion CEMA is the region of BCG Platinion Global covering Central Europa and Middle East
Source: BCG Platinion CEMA
Employees
• All with significant
professional experience
300
More than
Projects delivered worldwide
• Most together with BCG
1,000
More than
Clients in our core
industries
• In over 30 countries
300
More than
Offices (and counting)
• To continuously grow our
global presence
15
Currently based in
Industry practices6
Deep domain
expertise provided by

4. 3
Great business initiatives
often sabotaged by
challenges in IT
Frontends with highest visibility …
… but the greatest challenges lie
beneath the surface
Legacy IT architecture
Legacy IT TOM
Waterfall development
Digital Frontend
Platinion provides holistic view to
manage complexity in IT sustainably
Source: BCG Platinion

5. 4
Market conditions: Multitude of opportunities and challenges from maturing
energy markets and evolving technologies
Data
explosion
Emergence of
democratic
energy market
data (prices,
weather, etc.),
as well as
digitalization of
company info
flows
Pervasive
digitalization
Distributed
assets, e.g.,
wind turbines
or solar, with
sensors and
actuators
which are
always
connected
Enabling
technologies
Processing
power,
storage and
robotics ready
for AI,
machine
learning and
automation
New
markets
New market
places, e.g.,
enerchain or
enmacc, with
new products
and
mechanisms
New market
forces
Shift of
trading focus
to short-term
and increased
use of
algorithmic
energy trading
Source: BCG Platinion

6. 5Source: BCG Platinion
Our point of view: Four key
technologies are in focus of the
disruption affecting the energy
trading business
Big Data
Artificial
Intelligence
Robotics Blockchain
Technologies urge
for your change
and create new
opportunities

7. 6
Big Data is prerequisite to survive in Energy
Trading. Do you agree?
Do you believe that algorithmic trading is a
serious threat in current markets?
Robots free resources to sharpen focus on
value-add activities. Do you agree?
Does your company participate in a larger
blockchain initiative/pilot run?
Some polls
before we start

8. 7
Big Data

9. 8
In a connected world, batch processing and weekly
position updates seem like a relict of the past
Optimize Trade Dispatch
Real–time
IoT
Democratized
Price feeds
Real–time
market information
Sentiment
information

10. 9
Big Data has many aspects–from data collection up to operational execution
Data
collection
Data
structuring
Productive
change
Data
provisioning
Data
analysis
New processes need to be transitioned into
production in reliable, automated tools to
ensure positive commercial effects across
all functions (Sales, Trading, etc.) and
timeframes (short-/mid-/long-term)
Efficient tools required to collect
huge amounts of data from various
internal and energy market sources
Unified structure to be applied on
proprietary customer, competitor,
price and environmental insights
Cross-functional analytics
toolbox ideally used for
generation of consistent insights
on the energy market
Various stakeholders in
Dispatch, Optimization, Back
Office, Pricing, etc. require
timely access to their data
1
2
34
5
Big Data
platform
Operational
execution

11. 10
Artificial
Intelligence

12. 11
Let's see how trading works with AI
Train
Run
Data Model/"knowledge"
Trades
Trades/"experience"
…
Energy traders
stepwise move
towards
automated
trading

13. 12
From other industries but also from advanced energy traders we see a stepwise
approach towards digitalization
1
Electronic
platforms and STP
2
Algorithmic
execution
3
Algorithmic
assistance
4
Full
automatization
Source: BCG Platinion

14. 13
Robotics

15. 14
RPA and AI are complementary technologies for
capturing the full value of digitization
Source: BCG Platinion
RPA = Hand
Automation of routines
easing increased
workload
AI = Brain
Analytical approaches for
mimicking human
decisions and learning

16. 15
Robotic Process Automation is a great way to overcome
problems of missing automatization
Source: BCG Platinion
Digital process requiring human
involvement
No consistent automation, as legacy IT
systems are often not easily adaptable
Manual cross-check of invoices on
trading and billing systems
Example
Automatic invoice cross-check
based on simple rules
Example
Robot replicates human action on desktops
Robots replicate human actions

17. 16
Blockchain

18. 17
In its core, Blockchain is a distributed database with
several distinct attributes
Robust and
secure
Programmable
Historization
Immutable
No trust
infrastructure
Distributed
database

19. 18
General belief: Blockchain is assumed to unlock use
cases with three major elements
Public
ledger
Smart
contracts
Peer-to-peer
trading

20. 19
Get ready for the future–it's coming w/ or w/out you
Artificial Intelligence
Don't shy automated
trading–make your first
steps
Blockchain
Participate in pilots– a
place at the table is
important
Big Data
Have a good data
strategy at hand and
support first use cases
Introduce RPA before
you need it–then it's
too late
Robotics

21. platinion.com