The four-pillar framework that ensures benefit certainty to trading transformation

Every trading business wants transformation to deliver tangible, lasting benefits, whether they spend $4 million or $400 million on a project.

Too often, however, ambitious change programs fail to achieve what was promised. Costs and timelines balloon, stakeholder expectations diverge and investments fall short of their goals. In industries where capital allocation decisions are critical, organizations cannot afford transformation efforts that fail to deliver measurable returns.

What if trading businesses could reliably quantify the benefits a change program will deliver before it even begins? 

At Baringa, we know it is possible to achieve this clarity. We have developed a proven benefits and value framework that enables trading organizations to quantify the tangible benefits of transformation upfront. By gaining this clarity, the business can align their teams, set achievable targets, confidently secure funding, and realize value faster.

Ambiguity around transformation can be expensive

Many organizations reach out to Baringa after struggling to implement a C/ETRM platform. Some have been unable to get the system up and running effectively, while others find the final solution fails to meet their business needs, despite considerable investment. By the time we get involved, the organization is often facing significant cost pressures, higher operational risk from limited trust in the system or reliance on error-prone manual processes, and widespread change fatigue.

What is often required in these circumstances is reinvestment, but that is usually the last thing businesses want to consider. Making the decision to reinvest requires clear and measurable evidence that the new initiative can create meaningful impact without repeating the failures of past efforts. Without clarity, even well-planned transformation programs can stumble, leaving organizations frustrated and further mired in uncertainty.

Four pillars for unlocking transformation value 

Baringa’s benefits and value framework focuses on four essential pillars that help trading organizations understand the measurable impact of their investment: growth and effectiveness, operational excellence, risk reduction, and cost avoidance. 

Each pillar explores the process and system value to be unlocked by a transformation effort, creating a comprehensive view of potential returns across the business.

Together, these pillars provide a balanced scorecard that captures both the upside potential (growth and effectiveness) and downside protection (risk reduction and cost avoidance) of transformation, whilst also improving how the business operates (operational excellence), enabling maximum benefits to be unlocked across all pillars.

Designing and delivering the framework together

Baringa applies our benefits and value framework with a tailored approach that meets the unique needs of each business. For example when working with a company facing challenges with an underperforming C/ETRM system, we begin by assessing their recent experience.

We conduct interviews with key stakeholders across all trading functions and survey as many  end-users as possible, capturing their challenges, needs, and ideas for improvement. 

The surveys, which often achieve a response rate of over 50%, prove particularly insightful. Respondents candidly share their frustrations with the current platform whilst articulating the potential benefits and value of a new C/ETRM solution. This broadens our understanding and reveals nuances that had remained opaque to leadership.

We compile this information into potential quantitative and qualitative ‘value buckets’, then work with the business to assess the fact-based value of each improvement opportunity. Throughout this process, we will engage relevant stakeholders to validate our understanding of value drivers and confirm our assessment of potential benefits.

Finally, we map these benefits onto each pillar of the framework, providing clear evidence of the value to be unlocked through process, operating model, and system transformation. Crucially, these benefits align with specific, measurable changes in how work could be performed differently. This transforms strategic aspirations into concrete outcomes that leadership can monitor and stakeholders can trust.

Identifying multi-million-dollar benefits

Applying our framework to their transformation program, we have clients in the past year that have identified over a $100 million in annual benefits across their global trading portfolios. This provides a compelling business case for investment in the transformation program, complete with a clear payback period. 

These benefits spanned each of the framework’s pillars:

• Growth & effectiveness. Potential annual returns of $10+ million by unlocking greater capacity for trading growth and optimization
• Operational excellence. Efficiency gains of 5-20% by redeploying resources to more value-added activities
• Risk reduction. Average annual material savings of $10+ million through operational risk reduction (or risk capital reductions for more trading capacity intensive businesses) – mitigating exposure to operational and risk errors, as well as regulatory and compliance issues
• Cost avoidance. Reduction of $5-10+ million in annual IT costs (depending on the size and scale of their operations) by decommissioning legacy systems, reducing technical debt, eliminating expensive workarounds, and moving to a more fit-for-purpose solution. 

Shaping a fresh approach to transformation

While the quantified benefits are compelling, the framework’s value extends beyond numbers. The process itself catalyzes meaningful shifts in organizational culture and ways of working, which are vital for ensuring successful transformation and lasting value.

In applying the framework, we observe client stakeholders across our clients’ businesses taking more ownership and accountability in the change effort. Their concerns and ideas are heard and integrated, giving them a greater stake in the transformation. They also obtain a first-hand understanding of the potential impact and value of the program, and they can build a better view of what success looks like. At the leadership level, stakeholders gain the confidence and clarity to better articulate the case for change, approve the investment, and galvanize the wider organization around a shared vision of success.

These cultural and organizational shifts become particularly critical in complex initiatives like trading architecture transformations, where technology change must align with comprehensive people, process, and operating model evolution. 
Our clients’ experiences illustrate that the most successful transformations treat benefit clarity as foundational. By translating abstract improvement goals into concrete financial targets and measurable outcomes, trading companies will create certainty around change and ensure that transformation delivers sustainable value—not just in year one, but across the lifetime of their investment.

If you’d like to learn more about Baringa’s benefits and value framework, and how we can put it to work for your trading business, please get in touch.