2024 Vendor Perceptions – Early Impressions
I am now doing the analysis on the responses to the 2024 VPS and as usual, I’m surprised. The report probably won’t be out for a while as it is really quite tedious work doing the analysis as we look at it so many different ways. However, being only a day or so into it, I already see some interesting things that promise to make the final report a good read.
Overall, we had a good response but continuing the recent trend, north American responses are down again as Europe had the strongest response followed by Asia-Pacific. We also got better response rates from Middle East-Africa and south America this year. I think that speaks to the ever broadening nature of commodity trading and CTRM. Once largely a north American phenomenon, the center appears to be drifting ever eastwards and may not lie somewhere around Dubai. The north American market is increasingly mature and somehow less dynamic it seem yet I suspect the energy transition will fuel another round of innovation and interest there as well. I would also say we got a more meaningful spread across commodities than ever before and again this fairly represents how the industry has evolved.
At first sight, it seems that Asai-Pacific is increasing its awareness of vendors and solutions. Although Enuit have a large and faithful group of users in China and other parts of Asia-Pacific, we see much stronger representation of other vendors this time around. In power, a commodity with a strong regional component, we see quite different vendors mentioned in Asia-Pc, Europe and north America with the only common theme really proving to be ION and ION platforms.
Brand awareness is also interesting as I believe we will find a record number of names mentioned by respondents this year. There does seem to be much broader recognition of a whole host of players while ION remains the dominant brand in most instances – though not all! The sheer diversity of vendors mentioned is really encouraging. Names like Agiboo, Previse, Enuit, FIS, Topaz, Quor, Brady and others seem to have more resonance than in other years along witth regional and local favorites. The split of Brady into Quor and Brady is interesting – both brands are mentioned quite a bit but there is a sense that there is still confusion as some still identify Fintrade, for example, with Brady – we corrected that where it was obvious however, Brady may be benefitting a bit at Quor’s expense in this year’s results. On the ION side, we see significantly more mention of ION than underlying product names although OLF/Endur still has strong resonance it seems.
Finally, the respondents seem more knowledgable than ever. Yes, there are a few that give vendor and product names in commodity classes where that vendor is not and never has been active but they are few and far between. I would guess based on analysis done so far, that brand dominance will have declined as more people declined to name anyone and there was more variation in those that did name a candidate for leadership.
Always thoroughly absorbing, this year’s VPS looks like a peach.
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