Aspect Enterprise Solutions (AES), a leading provider of software as a service (SaaS) commodities trading and risk management solutions, today announces a significant strengthening of its metals market team together with a broadening of expertise in the sector.

The moves come with the appointment of industry specialist Bob Watson to the newly created post of Industry Director. Watson brings to AES a wealth of systems and process knowledge in metals trading, much of it around the London Metals Exchange (LME). According to AES chief executive Steve Hughes, Watson’s role will be to refine the business functionality of the company’s flagship cross commodity AspectCTRM framework in the metals trading and risk management area, reinforcing its leading position in the market.

“This is the catalyst for us to push still more aggressively into the broader commodity markets, backed up by a fully rounded portfolio of solutions. Bob will play an important part in accelerating our product development plans, helping extend our record achievements in energy into the metals space. To achieve this Bob will have access to a world-class development team and an industry leading SaaS architecture, working towards a new family of trade/risk solutions.”

Welcoming the opportunity Watson said he saw it as the perfect way to leverage his 25 years plus industry experience. “I am looking forward to helping deliver the next generation of CTRM solutions for metals, building on the established and proven AES solution framework. It’s an exciting challenge and one that I’m going to enjoy delivering on,” he said.

With the world’s first fully Web-delivered, trading and risk management and market data platform for desktops through to mobile devices, AES has built a substantial global user base for its fast to deploy, easy to support and simple to learn and use solutions. The company’s technology scales readily from small trading companies through to large enterprises.

Before joining AES Watson was LME back office product manager with commodities trade/risk software company Brady PLC, before which he was director of base metals integration at UBS AG Ltd. His earlier career spans senior positions with broking, financial and trading software companies together with automation and telecommunications firms. He developed market leading software for trading derivatives on the London and US markets and for more than 25 years was involved in both systems and business analysis for profit, risk and exposure reporting.