CTRM Choices

I don’t know about everyone else but we have had a remarkably busy start to 2019. For example, we have been engaged in several market sweeps already where we are tasked with sweeping the solutions marketplace to propose a long list of possible solutions for a next step in a selection exercise – usually an RFP but not necessarily so. As analysts that pretty much know all of the vendors and products in the space, we are able to ensure that a user company doesn’t miss any vendors and solutions they may be unaware of while reducing costs and risks of the project. This year, it seems a popular service! And that’s good because it also suggests pent up demand in the market.

Now if you are a buyer of CTRM software, you might be wondering about choice. After all, ION seems to be acquiring everybody these days right? OpenLink, Aspect, Triple Point and now Allegro – who is next? However, fear not. There are so many choices in this market place that no one can truly dominate it. For starters, ION aren’t necessarily the biggest fish in the pond. SAP would take that honor and it has worked very hard in the last few years to round out its Commodity Management product. FIS is also a fairly sizable entity actually and it has a number of brands to leverage just like ION and from what we see, that is exactly what it is doing bring Kiodex, FrontArena, Adaptiv and XDM as well as Aligne to market in commodities. But you know, E/CTRM has never been market to be dominated. Caminus tried. SunGard tried. Brady started down that route too. The issue is there are too many differing requirements, complexities, types of users to have a single, standard solution. Add to that the speed at which things change and actually, acquisitive vendors often get into trouble acquiring overlapping products and not being able to migrate them fast enough to keep up with technology and business trends. So, looking for software? Check the directory because we have over 100 choices for you right here.

Now of course, it depends on where you are, what commodities you trade, what type of business you have and so on as to exactly how many choices you will have but for almost any geography and commodity, it’s numerous. Check out the CTRM sourcebook also – it has over 30 products and vendors listed and is a quick way to narrow down your choices from the bewildering array of vendors and products.

Give us a call if you need help looking for your next CTRM. As analysts, we don’t do software selections per se but we can help you navigate the CTRM space and point you towards the solutions you should be looking at as opposed to the ones you have heard of (of course, they may well be one and the same but not necessarily so).

 

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