WESTPORT, CT--(Marketwired - Jun 13, 2013) - Triple Point Technology, the leading global provider of on-premise and in-cloud Commodity Management software, announced today the availability of Commodity XL Strategic Planning and Procurement™ (SPP) 8.0. This new release of Triple Point's award-winning Commodity Management solution enables food and beverage, process and industrial manufacturing, and consumer products (CP) companies to mitigate commodity risk and improve earnings with sophisticated new tools and analytics that manage raw material procurement.
Volatile commodity prices cause fluctuations in the cost of raw materials, packaging, and energy that affect profit margins. Food and beverage, manufacturing, and CP companies are often ill-equipped to address cost volatility because they don't have the software solutions to manage the commodity market risk inherent in the hundreds of items they buy from a multitude of suppliers -- all of which may have different cost component models. SPP 8.0 mitigates commodity price risk by enabling companies to view, aggregate, and evaluate all cost models and conduct real-time, forward-looking scenario analysis as plans change and markets move.
SPP 8.0 includes powerful new market-based analytics and risk management capabilities that deliver a significant competitive advantage. The solution delivers enhancements in the following areas:
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Procurement: Mitigates commodity risk associated with the purchase of raw materials by providing pricing formulas that deliver highly accurate cost forecasts for all commodities such as wheat, barley, maize, sugar, aluminum, pulp, bunker fuel, diesel fuel, electricity, and natural gas. Fully supports cross-hedging, which enables coverage calculations for commodities where the hedged commodity differs from the forecast commodity. For example, beverage companies often hedge glass bottle prices with natural gas futures and need to understand the ratios and coverage provided by the hedges.
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Risk Management: Enables management to assess the performance of commodity procurement and hedging strategies at-a-glance on an intuitive, graphical dashboard. Provides key performance indicators (KPIs) including performance versus market, performance versus plan, performance versus forecast, and coverage by category. KPIs are continuously updated, enabling management to take proactive, corrective action instead of having to wait for periodic, retrospective reports.
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Business Intelligence: Facilitates smarter, faster decisions by providing customized views of material and commodity coverage and exposure for functional groups including procurement, risk management, and finance. Enables companies to understand and analyze the "true" P/L of finished products by mapping hedge gains, losses, and costs to raw material purchases.