This post is an updated version of our 2020 article on automation in commodity trading. A lot has changed, not least the arrival of AI in CommOS! But the starting point remains the same: you don’t need AI to unlock significant operational gains. In fact, the companies building the most effective AI strategies are those who got their automation foundations right first.
Most commodity trading teams already know that automation is valuable. But the rise of AI in commodities is shedding light on just how much trading companies have been leaving on the table by not automating their processes until now. And the thing is that, even with AI as an option, there are many cases where traditional automation can be more effective. The question is how do these ways of achieving the same goals work together? And how can traders build an AI strategy that’s targeted, measurable, and financially disciplined?
This guide is designed to answer that question practically: which workflows deliver the fastest return when automated, and where AI takes it further once the foundations are in place.
Why automation still deserves your attention in an AI-first world
There’s a risk that “automation” has become background noise, something assumed to be less powerful than AI, or just something to hand over to an AI to sort out. Neither assumption is safe.
Many trading businesses still rely on manual data entry, spreadsheet-based reporting, and email chains to manage contract progression, approvals, and document creation. These aren’t minor inefficiencies. They add up to substantial costs in labour, errors, asset turnover, and in the margin lost when processes slow down deal execution.
Automation addresses these costs directly. And it creates the clean, connected data environment that makes AI genuinely useful when you introduce it.
The commodity trading workflows worth automating first
Some workflows are high-frequency, error-prone, and directly linked to revenue, making them the ones that deliver the fastest return. At Gen10, we know that every organisation has their own unique processes, so we ensure you can customise each workflow to your real-world processes.
Contract creation
The ability to copy contracts, pre-approved clauses and templates in CommOS allow contracts to be generated automatically from deal data, with counterparty-specific terms applied consistently. This reduces drafting time, version control risk, and cuts down on the approval processes that can delay execution.
Pricing calculations
If your pricing relies on manual calculations, spreadsheets, or manually inputting the prices, this can be both time-consuming and error-prone, especially in ensuring pricing remains up-to-date after inspections or converting units. Automated pricing applies the correct formula for each contract and shipment, and updates these calculations with a click as things change in the real world.
Approvals
Routing contracts, invoices, or exceptions through an automated approval workflow ensures nothing is lost in an inbox and means that actions cannot be taken until the correct approvals have been granted. All with a clear audit trail and full status tracking.
Shipping and logistics documents
Whether creating a warehouse release request, ensuring your digital inventory matches your container packing lists, or ensuring bills of lading, certificates of origin, letters of credit, and any other mandatory documents are attached to a shipment, automation can accelerate many of the time- and energy-consuming processes of the back office.
Automating document generation from existing contract and lot data, combined with updating these records automatically as new documents are received reduces retyping and errors, and ensures your entire business knows exactly where all stock is at all times.
Automated workflows progress contracts through each logistics stage
Inventory and position updates
As goods move through the supply chain, position and inventory statuses should update automatically. Manual updates introduce lag and the risk of acting on stale data. Automated status tracking keeps traders, operators, and risk teams working from the same real-time picture.
Reporting
P&L, position, and exposure reports that are compiled manually are slow to produce and quickly out of date. Automated reporting pulls live data, applies the correct methodology, and can be scheduled or triggered on demand, making reconciliation instant and providing not just daily, but real-time reports as needed.
What automation means for different stakeholders
The CFO lens: lower cost, fewer errors, faster close
The financial case for automation is straightforward. Reduced manual processing means lower labour cost per trade. Fewer errors mean less time spent on corrections and dispute resolution. Faster document turnaround and automated invoicing improve asset turnover and free up credit lines faster.
CommOS clients have seen contract processing accelerate by up to 25x. That’s not a marginal efficiency, it’s a structural cost reduction that scales with volume.
The operations lens: fewer handoffs, less rekeying
Every manual handoff is a point of friction. Automation removes the handoffs by connecting the workflow: data entered at contract stage flows through to logistics, invoicing, and reporting.
The result is operators who spend their time on creating more profitable allocations and formulating strategies, not data entry. And using one connected system to automate your entire business reduces the risks created by competing spreadsheets, improves data-sharing across teams, and means that logistics calendars are automatically updated and available across the entire team.
The risk and compliance lens: financial risk, traceability, and audit
Hedging decisions depend on an accurate, current view of open positions, but manual pricing and periodic reporting introduce lag and uncertainty. Automated pricing recalculates mark-to-market values in real time. Combined with live position reporting, risk managers and traders work from the same picture, and hedging decisions are made on accurate exposure data, even during the course of the day.
Automated workflows also create a complete audit trail, with every action, every approval, and every document version recorded against the trade. Credit limit warnings trigger automatically. Tolerance breaches are flagged before they become problems.
What AI adds, and why the order matters
The workflows above eliminate waste and reduce errors. AI takes this automation to the next stage, by contextually applying the data, not just moving it.
In CommOS, embedded AI extends automation in several ways:
Intelligent contract review
AI can review incoming contracts against your standard terms or other contracts, flagging exceptions and reducing the time your legal or commercial teams spend on routine review by surfacing only the clauses that need attention.
Demand and position forecasting
Combining the clean, structured data from CommOS with your external data sources such as vessel tracking systems, AI can support more accurate position forecasting and exposure modelling, incorporating market data, shipment timelines, and contractual obligations to give traders a more complete forward view.
Natural language reporting and querying
Rather than waiting for a scheduled report, teams can query their trading data in plain language and receive instant answers, reducing dependence on BI teams for routine data requests.
Why AI comes after automation
AI performs best on clean, structured, consistently captured data. If underlying workflows are manual and inconsistent, AI produces poor and unreliable outputs. Companies that automate first create the conditions for AI to work well, and develop a clearer sense of which problems actually need it.
That distinction matters for budget. Every AI query consumes tokens, and their costs accumulate fast. Asking AI to generate reports that conventional automation already produces is a quick way to burn through an AI budget unnecessarily. Reserve AI for tasks that genuinely require it: interpreting complexity, handling unstructured inputs, surfacing non-obvious patterns. Use automation for everything it can already do cheaply and well.
Where to start
The most practical approach is to begin with the workflows that are highest-frequency and most error-prone. For most trading teams, that’s contract creation, approvals, and managing shipping documents.
From there, reconciliations and reporting typically deliver the next tier of return, and save the most time. Once those are running cleanly, you have both the operational capacity and the data quality to layer in AI where it genuinely adds something beyond what the automation already does.
CommOS supports this full-scale automation, from end-to-end workflow automation across front, middle, and back office, through to embedded AI capabilities that extend what your teams can do without increasing headcount. If you’d like to see how that works in practice, book a demo.
