There is an active programme of sharing best practice, engagement with technology vendors and discussion of important industry trends. A summarized version of the agenda of each Forum meeting can be found on the publications section of this site.
Our work is addressing four major areas, which also form the structure of meetings and the discussions:
Architecture & Technology,
Operations,
Leadership and HR,
Innovation,
Active participation from Forum members is encouraged. Typically a member will volunteer to lead the preparation of material on an agreed topic in advance of a Forum meeting, collecting feedback and opinions from other members. Where appropriate a sub-committee/working group is formed of interested member organizations to develop materials and discuss the topic in detail. The Forum also welcomes participation of external IT services and consultancy organizations in helping to facilitate discussion on the chosen topic and assist in the presentation to Forum members.
Areas typically covered include:
Discussing and where agreed, progression of Trading IT-solutions that apply to the whole industry e.g. Trade execution platforms, new post-trade execution solutions, reference definitions to enable common Smart Contract creation, Regulation reporting, and more Generic Technology landscape e.g Management and productivity tools. This may involve a debate on best practices with regards to change and run of IT landscapes.
Sharing industry best practices towards ‘Commodity’ technology topics such as Cloud Architecture, generic software architecture trends (e.g. data lakes, Blockchain, API) and related Cyber Security topics.
Discussing best practice HR topics in the Energy Industry and related industries, e.g. hiring for innovation, talent management, attracting millennials, future IT skills, people development.
Focus on the personal development of both CIO and the Architecture groups with external speaking engagements and network effect.
Discuss Target IT Operating model and standards that apply to the whole industry.
Providing software and data vendors with a clear industry vision for their product development planning, e.g. common data sources, issues, data vendors and technologies.
Support the development and funding of shared software and services in non-differentiating areas where there is mutual benefit and a clear cost saving, or quality improvement, for the industry as a whole. Non-differentiating areas are areas in which members are equally obliged to adopt IT-solutions with no margin for entrepreneurial choices. The Forum does not intend to act as a software developer or a service provider, but aims to leverage available capabilities in the market.
Acting as an industry body to discuss topics of general interest with other energy business forums/organizations like covering the full energy trading value chain.
Acting as a catalyst for the development of process standardization and process automation governance in collaboration with other industry platforms, providing guidance on better operations of the solutions.