2020 brought on brand new challenges for everybody in the energy industry. Working from home set-ups were particularly challenging for traders and analysts who normally work in close proximity in trade floors.
Our director of product management for MarketView, Sven Schoerner, sat down with ComTech Advisory to talk about the benefits MarketView as a data provider for agile operations.
ComTech Advisory: What are you hearing and seeing from prospects and customers with respect to lockdown business continuity?
Sven Schoerner: Working in commodity trading usually requires access to multiple business critical software systems and often a specific hardware setup with multiple monitors and trading turrets. Replicating and maintaining such a work environment at home on short notice for many employees at once was and remains a big challenge for all participants in this market.
ComTech Advisory: How can Enverus and MarketView help as regards business continuity for example?
Sven Schoerner: MarketView can be easily installed in less than a minute on any Windows computer. Once the user logs in with their username, they immediately have access to their previously used workspace configuration. You don’t need to run our software on Citrix and you don’t need an additional authentication device.
This makes it much easier for our clients to get set up quickly and to be able to pick up their work from where they left off when they left the office.
We wanted to be there for our customers during this unusual time; therefore, we offered all our existing clients unlimited additional user licenses for free for 60 days. Our software system often runs on wallboards in trading floors that can be viewed by users that don’t have individual licenses. We want to give those users access to our software at home as well.
ComTech Advisory: What do you think are the takeaways for the post-lockdown future?
Sven Schoerner: Many of my colleagues and I have partly worked from home for many years. But for many businesses and employees this is a completely new challenge the pandemic has brought upon them. I think after this pandemic is over, many companies and their employees will evaluate how this period has worked for them and they will evaluate the potential “costs” of working from home against costs they have from office rent, commuting, etc.
I am sure that working from home will be more common in the future than it was in the past.
This also means that software providers like us will make a bigger effort in the future to make their products work on multiple devices at multiple locations without a huge installation and configuration effort.
ComTech Advisory: What plans do you have around MarketView going forward?
Sven Schoerner: We have a lot of ideas and coming improvements on our roadmap for MarketView. One of them is the better integration with our in-house market forecast and analytics data. Being able to access this data on one platform together with 3rd party price data is a huge differentiator that we have compared to our competitors.
We will also make the use of proprietary data with our product much easier for the user to upload at will and we will better integrate our mobile app with our desktop application. Finally, and most important, we will continue to ensure that the MarketView platform and our new web-based curve builder solution have a seamless experience for our customers.
MarketView makes working from home work for energy analysts and traders
Here are five reasons why MarketView makes it easy to plug into markets remotely:
- It’s lightweight. MarketView delivers real-time pricing data without bogging down your operating system. Run it in the background without worrying about interference.
- No additional fees. The competition charges extra to work from home or on a different machine. We don’t do that.
- Full access, no matter where you are. MarketView users always get the full dataset available, whether working from home or anywhere else in the world.
- ExcelTools access. Even if MarketView Desktop is turned off, ExcelTools is ready to work.
- Fully scalable to fit your needs. Customize MarketView for your needs, save on the bottom line.
Ready to take a spin of MarketView? Sign up today for your free trial.
