OpenLink has a 25 year track record in various forms of banking, treasury management systems. The latest release of their corporate treasury solution shows how all this has been brought together into one platform to provide full commodity management and treasury management functionality across the supply chain. The system looks at the risks involved in the materials/commodities across the supply chain, and the inherent currency/FX exposures of those commodities as the figure below shows:

Source & Copyright©2016 - OpenLink

In commodity management a vital requirement is the ability to deal not only with the commodity exposures, but also managing the physical contracts and associated documentation that goes with managing commodities, e.g. freight, transport, bills of lading, etc

The OpenLink system focuses on raw materials and commodities, enabling the system to show the earnings at risk in the supply chain from both commodities and treasury, as the figure below shows:

Earnings at risk

Source & Copyright©2016 - OpenLink

The comprehensive treasury management functionality includes the ability to compute the Value At Risk (VAR) in the supply chain.

OpenLink is available in the cloud or as a standalone solution. They offer a cloud solution that is built to scale for large corporations.

Charges for an OpenLink installation are based on the number of users, it provides a modular approach where companies can select the functionality they need today but can add on modules as their requirements grow. OpenLink say they “have bundled their costs to be competitive in the market.”

OpenLink  users

Over the last 24 months OpenLink has renewed their focus on the Treasury management side of the business. They have been replacing existing treasury management systems with their integrated commodity and treasury management solution which has proved particularly attractive to commodity companies, energy companies, airlines and supermarket chains.

One corporate replaced multiple treasury management and commodity management systems with OpenLink which integrated all processes and systems into one solution.

Users of OpenLink are typically large companies with 1 billion+ turnover and extensive supply chains world-wide.

Future development

Over the next year OpenLink plan to enhance their integrated commodity and treasury management solution with “Payment Factory” functionality to enable high volume in-house centralized payment processing.  Generally they will be focussing on reducing operational and funding costs, reducing operational risks, and maximizing liquidity visibility.   

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CTMfile take: Commodity management is not just about about risk management, it is also includes managing the physical contracts and associated documentation that goes with managing. This is a key differentiator for OpenLink’s integrated commodity and treasury management solution.