Contigo Sees Good Demand for ETRM
It may be close to the Christmas holidays but it’s still very busy, says Simon Wheeler, CEO at Contigo. “We are seeing lots of new leads coming through and a lot of demand from our customers for services,” he told me this week. Contigo has just launched its ICE Connector and that has created some interest apparently while its EPEX M7 connector is also due for release early next year. Additionally, they have had a number of new customers go live with their software including Eniig which was implemented in just 14 weeks according to a recent press announcement.
Simon sees some of the demand coming from companies with legacy or homegrown systems where the older solutions aren’t ‘quite doing the job’ anymore. Many smaller entities still use manual processes and others are start-ups, he told me. The start-ups seem to be looking to onboard ETRM solutions to start with rather than waiting until they are up and running, he said, which is something of a change. Simon surmises that may be due to the affordability of cloud-based solutions and the easier contractual route to moving to another system later on as the company’s business grows if needed. Certainly, ComTech is seeing lots of evidence of a replacement market developing and more affordable cloud-based solutions on the market.
Indeed, the Eniig announcement backs up some of these assertions regarding the changing nature of the market. Quoted in that announcement was Camilla Ejstrup Frøkjær, Eniig portfolio and project manager who stated that “Our legacy ETRM system did not handle gas particularly well, and so we decided to select a new ETRM system that would make it easier to manage the market risk. It was important for us that the system was simple to use and that it would be quick to implement, as we needed it to be operating in a matter of a few months, rather than years. We particularly liked the cloud hosted option for enTrader, which increased the simplicity and convenience for us. It meant that we could get the system operating without having to use the resources of our own IT department, and when the system is upgraded Contigo simply push it out overnight and it’s done.
Simon also noted that he had been in the CEO role at Contigo just one-year since the acquisition by Australian-based ETRM vendor, EnergyOne. “It’s been really exciting adding several new customers to our user community in that period and I’m looking forward to 2020!” he told me. “A lot of our business is referral and this is fueling some natural expansion as we have added more staff and we have new customers in new regions in 2019 and have established the solution in the Nordics as well.”
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