ATOM Solutions: Realizing a Fast ROI on ETRM Implementations
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ATOM Solutions: Realizing a Fast ROI on ETRM Implementations

Firoz Jhaver, Co-Founder and CEO, ATOM SolutionsFiroz Jhaver, Co-Founder and CEO
Modern Energy Trading and Risk Management (ETRM) software have become an integral part of the business for energy trading firms looking to manage their operations and market risk while utilizing analytics to stay on top of the competition. With several mature solutions and some emerging players, there are many ETRM choices and combinations to choose from. Knowledge of the strengths and gaps of each of these systems is essential in making informed system selection decisions. While some vendors embrace an open platform approach which encourages customizations to address each business’s specific needs, others have products tailored to meet key industry business processes closely. Knowing what features your business requires and how that matches to vendors’ true capabilities can be a delicate dance through the evaluation process. Because of their deep reach into critical business data and extended implementation and customization cycles, ETRM systems are a long-term investment; a sound choice can not only help a company realize a fast ROI but also provide long-term benefits for years to come.

There are many questions to be answered before shelling out substantial amounts on a solution. From the dozens of options available, how do you pick the one that is the right fit for your company? Does that solution enable straight-through-processing? How do you know your requirements have been adequately addressed? How do you make sense of the variety of available modules and pricing models? Should you bring something on-premise or utilize it in the cloud? There are many more pertinent questions like these which need to be answered before committing. It is imperative to have the right partner to help answer such questions as the cost of making an incorrect choice can be monumental for an organization. “ATOM Solutions can be that expert partner,” Firoz Jhaver, Co-founder and CEO of the firm, confidently says. “What makes us unique is the decades of experience in working with these software packages in various capacities and leveraging our extensive know-how for our clients’ success. We leverage a library of requirements and utilize best practices built over many years to deliver very effective system selection guidance to our clients.”

The bigger challenge after choosing the right fit, however, lies beyond just answering questions. Even after many careful deliberations, solutions often fail to drive the anticipated value. “The importance of having the right people on a project cannot be understated,” underlines Jhaver.


What makes us unique is the decades of experience in working with these software packages in various capacities and leveraging our extensive know-how for our clients’ success


A time-tested implementation methodology supports the people doing the day-to-day project work and provides an overall planning, execution, and reporting structure. To corroborate this, he points toward a bulk commodities trading company which hired a large systems integrator to implement a market leading ETRM solution. After two years and massive investments, the integrator failed to deliver expected results. ATOM Solutions was brought in to turn the project around. After evaluating the needs of trading, scheduling, accounting, risk, and credit groups, ATOM built a ‘proof-of-concept’ to display to business units how the software could be effectively utilized to meet the firm’s needs. The client is now confident that the solution will deliver the expected results. The new platform is to go live soon under ATOM’s guidance.

“Our OnTarget Project Delivery MethodologyTM is at the heart of these successful endeavors,” claims Jhaver. The OnTarget approach involves a series of ETRM specific tools and templates which reduces the overall time to analyze requirements, document configurations and customizations, and implement and test the solution. As opposed to starting from scratch, organizations can choose the tools nearest to their requirements from ATOM’s expansive library to save time while reducing errors. Built with decades of industry best practices baked in, the methodology empowers consultants to deliver high-quality solutions and enables faster deployments under budget.

When asked about new services his firm offers outside of traditional implementation projects, Jhaver mentions that the company performs on-request ETRM implementation audits to help enterprises determine the functional fit of existing solutions and to evaluate the appropriateness of configuration choices within a product. Other recent projects include enabling clients to harvest big data from existing ETRM databases to afford market insights and support decisions for strategic initiatives. Additional ATOM Solutions services include providing application support through managed services, providing testing-as-a-service, and implementing robotic process automation (RPA) solutions to help increase efficiency in client organizations.

Jhaver credits ATOM Solutions’ continued success to every member of the team. Tapping into the average experience of 15 to 20 years the workforce possesses, the company aims to continue finding innovative ways to further enable customers to realize benefits from their technology investments in the ETRM landscape.