Choosing the right natural gas trading software is more than a technical decision — it’s an opportunity to improve how your team operates every day. From reducing manual tasks to ensuring long-term support, the right platform should help your business run more efficiently and adapt as it grows.
Let’s explore the key capabilities and areas that matter most — including a couple of important questions many evaluation teams often overlook.
What You May Not Think to Ask – But Should
Two important questions often get overlooked during software evaluations:
“What product features do you have that I should take advantage of—even if they’re not in my original requirements?”
It’s common for teams to focus on matching their current workflows. However, by doing so, they may miss opportunities to improve or simplify those workflows with features they didn’t initially consider. Asking this question opens the door to discovering functionality that could add real value.
“What is on your natural gas ETRM product roadmap?”
Choosing a software solution isn’t just about what it can do today — it’s about where it’s going. A strong software partner should be continuously evolving to meet future needs. Understanding the roadmap gives you insight into whether the product will grow with your business.
Equally important is how the company gathers input to shape the product roadmap. The best software providers actively involve their clients in product enhancements — not just through support tickets, but through intentional, structured feedback opportunities.
Whether it’s hosting roundtable discussions, facilitating user groups, or dedicating conference sessions to customer feedback, these touchpoints show a commitment to building solutions that serve their clients’ evolving needs.
Jenn Panariso, Principal ETRM Consultant at PCI Energy Solutions, discusses essential questions to ask during natural gas ETRM software evaluations.
Letting Go of Spreadsheets to Manage Positions
One common challenge when evaluating software is overcoming resistance to change, especially when it means moving away from the comfort of manual spreadsheets. While spreadsheets are flexible, familiar, and quick to start with — which is why teams often default to them — they lack the structure to reliably capture live updates.
They require manual re-entry, increasing the risk of human error, and making tracking changes difficult.
A well-designed natural gas position dashboard is just one example of how to eliminate spreadsheets. The dashboard would:
- Deliver real-time trade position updates automatically, so traders always work with the most current data
- Serve as a single source of truth, replacing the disconnected spreadsheets that can lead to errors or misaligned decisions
- Enable the entire trading team to work from a unified view, reducing the risk of inconsistent data across individuals
Jenn Panariso, Principal ETRM Consultant at PCI Energy Solutions, explains the different types of challenges that teams could face when evaluating natural gas trading software.
Scheduling Templates that Save Time
Schedulers often create the same nomination paths repeatedly. A strong software solution should make that easier — by allowing you to create templates for these common routes, so you’re not starting from scratch every time.
Templates help ensure consistency, reduce manual effort, and speed up routine submissions. The result? Your team can spend less time on repetitive tasks and more time focusing on tasks where their attention is needed most.
Pipeline Integration to Automate and Simplify Your Workflow
If your team is still logging into pipeline portals to submit nominations or manually inputting scheduled quantities, it may be time to rethink the workflow.
With PCI, nominations can be submitted directly to NAESB EDI-compliant pipelines from within the system — eliminating the need for duplicate entry into pipeline bulletin boards. Schedulers can also download scheduled quantities directly, simplifying reconciliation and reducing errors.
Modern gas trading software should integrate seamlessly with NAESB EDI-compliant pipelines, enabling you to:
- Submit nominations directly from your trading platform
- Retrieve scheduled quantities for faster reconciliation
- Automatically update pipeline tariff rates, including fuel loss rates, whenever revisions occur
Jenn Panariso, Principal ETRM Consultant at PCI Energy Solutions, discusses how PCI handles NAESB EDI-compliant integration for nominations and tariff rate schedules.
Support that Lasts Beyond Go-Live
When evaluating a software solution, it’s important to understand the level of support you can expect after implementation.
Great post-go-live support includes:
- A dedicated team that understands your workflows
- Timely resolution of issues if they arise
- An ongoing partnership to enhance the platform as your business evolves
The key is continuity: the same team that led the implementation should stay involved after go-live. They already know your business workflows, your system requirements, and the decisions made during setup — which means faster, more informed support when issues come up.
Look for providers who treat support not as a ticket queue, but as a long-term relationship invested in your success.
Final Thoughts
The right natural gas trading software should do more than meet your current needs — it should help your team work smarter, faster, and with fewer errors. As you evaluate options, ask questions that reveal long-term value, not just a short-term fit. Look for solutions that replace spreadsheets, streamline your scheduling workflow with templates and pipeline integration, and offer the kind of support that lasts well beyond go-live. It’s not just about the software — it’s about choosing a partner for the road ahead.
