tegos Develops comotor for Physical Metals Players
For some time, ComTech had been aware of a German vendor of recycling software called tegos but just recently, we noted that the company had brought a new solution to market called comotor for metals trading. I talked to co-founder, Ralf Linnemann, and comotor product manager, Miguel Flaminio, last week to find out a bit more.
tegos was founded in 1996 and today employs some 60 people. It is a Microsoft Dynamics NAV partner and it got started by developing a scrap metal recycling product on top of the ERP product. To that end, tegos is another of the ERP-based vendors that have extended in to the commodity management and trading world.
tegos started developing comotor in response to a number of customers and prospects, who said that they were trading metals. Interestingly, tegos developed comotor as an investment without an initial customer. It is now exploring the possibilities of extending the software into other commodities as well. Today, tegos has 8 customers on the comotor product including customers in Germany, the Netherlands and Thailand.
Their strength is the physical metals side and support for the physical processes according to Mr. Linnemann. The solution is strong on supporting the capture of quality attributes and reflecting their impact on pricing. It allows users to enter analyses all along the value chain to track quality and other attributes that impact pricing of the commodity. Additionally, they have developed a fixation module to support price fixation and support many types of pricing methods, penalties and payments via its flexible pricing engine.
As might be expected, it fully supports the supply chain and is a repository for all the complex and varied documentation collected along the way. It is also strong on the handling of the metals and supports all types of transportation methods and logistics including weighbridges and inventory tracking. Currently, futures and swaps are supported and a prototype is currently being built for options. The solution provides real time price risk and price exposures as a KPI. It is clearly, fully integrated with the accounting side and supports industry requirements such as COGS.
tegos has gone so far as to develop a whole new website for the product and in the process utilizes video presentations on the site to advertise and market the product. There is also a very useful fact sheet to download from the site.A demonstration is currently being lined up for us and so in April, we expect to have a better idea about the completeness and applicability of the solution. Meanwhile, another ERP-based solution is now available for physical metal players.
