Trade Templates & Market Templates
Business Case
With hundreds of possible distinct information elements, the complexity of energy transactions requires a robust data structure for efficient management.
The main goals are data reliability, data completeness, information integrity, and the facilitation of highly performant data processing.
ChorusLink is built on an entirely re-engineered approach to trade data management – Trade Templates and Market Templates. These templates define defaults and drive data standardisation, allowing significantly increased data control as well as processing efficiency.
Trade Templates
Trade Templates provide a high-level classification of transactions by type of
- Commodity
- Contract type
- Settlement method
- Market place
- Price structure, and
- Quantity structure.
Based on the selected Trade Template, certain data fields are marked as either editable, required or forbidden, and the corresponding defaults are set – as shown on the sample above for the Trade Template Physical Forward traded bilaterally (with fixed (F) price and quantity structures and physical (P) settlement).
Market Templates
Market Templates are applications of a Trade Template to specific markets, as such they define on a more detailed level editable, required and forbidden data fields.
Market Templates also set the additional defaults related to that market (this sample relates to Electricity Traded OTC for Amprion in Germany, Hourly Baseload in EUR).
Also, market templates can have Smart Contracts associated – code snippets that carry out defined tasks. Updating Smart Contracts by Market Template ensures easy adaptation of the solution as requirements change.
Benefits
Standardisation, Simplification and Automation
By controlling the various data points on energy transactions in a stringent manner via Market Templates, ChorusLink promotes data standardisation and significantly simplifies data workflows (like trade matching). Smart Contracts assigned to Market Templates provide valuable tools for the automation of processes.
The main benefits of Market Templates are the following:
- Simplified and Faster Data Migration
- Performance Improvements
- Improved Trade Control
- Reduced Risk of Incorrect Data Capture
- Joint Platform Benefits
Trade Control
Controls, monitoring and, if required, restrictions and limitations can be implemented on the level of Market Templates, both for system users and interfaces.
Data Capture Error Avoidance
Market Templates exercise rigorous control over the trade capture process with required / forbidden fields and by defaulting data, all but eliminating the risk of incorrect data capture.
The standardisation brought by Market Templates also supports the functioning of a core feature of the ChorusLink common trade repository – the electronic matching of trades.
Data Migration
Data migration becomes a lot simpler and faster, as trades only need to be mapped to the correct Market Templates. These then default many data points that do not need to be migrated and validated anymore.
As they also set the configuration of trades, any system implementation is relieved of up to 95% of related efforts and can focus entirely on special cases, custom master data and custom workflows.
Performance
Market Templates ensure the data structure optimally supports performance-dependent processes – such as position valuation and reporting – by grouping trades of the same type.
Reduced Cost of Ownership
In Previse Systems’ centralised master data management, Market Templates (and with that full trade configurations) are available to all customers.
Configuring new instruments (e.g. due to market development or on subscriber request) is included in support services. New Market Templates are defined once on the platform and validated with automated testing routines, minimising related efforts for subscribers.
As more and more Market Templates get released, all related configuration – tested and validated – becomes available to all customers – relieving them from the costs and efforts related to the setup and definition of new instruments: as long as anybody has already traded an instrument, all corresponding settings are there for all subscribers.
Master Data Management as a Service
Overview
The benefits of a fully cloud-native SaaS ETRM include comprehensive centralised master data management, relieving the back office (or system admin) of an unnecessary burden.
Energy market participants need to maintain various types of master data required for trading operations in their IT systems. Ensuring that this data is always kept up to date in every system generates costs and is frequently a manual (and error-prone) process. APIs to build interfaces are only available for a limited number of sources, which until now made automation of master data maintenance all but impossible.
Previse Systems now makes this possible.
Benefits
- Previse Coral users no longer have to spend resources to keep this data current.
- Previse Coral users receive verified data from one source.
- Previse Coral users can connect any downstream systems via REST APIs.
- Master data management is included in the Previse Coral licence.
Scope of the Service
Previse Systems connects to various sources of publicly available information and maintains master data as part of the trade repository. This data is then made available – for no additional cost – to Previse Coral users via the Previse Coral Master Data API.
Master data managed centrally in Previse Coral includes:
- Company base information
- ACER master data
- Shipper codes
- Holiday calendars
- Exchange / product calendars
- Exchange instrument information
- Payment term definitions
- Published index price definitions
Previse Systems already manages master data for several exchanges as well as for a variety of other sources. As further customers implement Previse Coral, the array of covered master data is continuously expanding.
Future Enhancements
Currently the ChorusLink Master Data API supports the download of all available data, or specific data queried for – whereby queries can also be based on creation/update times. In the future, it will furthermore be possible to subscribe to a push of new data.
This focus on changes in the data set will simplify master data propagation out of ChorusLink to surrounding systems significantly.