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Inatech Thrives as a Part of the ValSoft Portfolio

Fred Bendle, the CEO of Inatech, has been involved with the business every step of the way since helping to establish the vendor while still at Glencore. More recently, after Inatech’s acquisition by ValSoft, he has stepped into the CEO role, which he describes as ‘challenging’. In fact, Inatech is doing well it seems and despite the challenging nature of managing a CTRM vendor, Fred is pleased with progress. “Glencore’s deep pockets really kept Inatech going for several years,” he told me. “But when ValSoft bought the business, it was essentially breaking even and of course, it set some tough targets while providing new insights into the software business and a lot of focus on success.”

Fred Bendle, CEO, Inatech

By the end of 2023, Inatech was and continues to perform very well in terms of both growth and profitability. Apparently, much of the recent success that Inatech has experienced under his leadership came in north America where its Techoil product has proven very successful. “We grew revenues 120% in that last two years while cutting back on some expenses,” he told me.

Inatech offers Techoil, Techoil Rack, Techoil C-Store and Techoil dispatch and other products on the ETRM side and a suite of products targeting marine fuel management led by Shiptech. “After the huge spike in container rates during covid, rates have returned to historic norms and container companies which make up most of our client base, have cut back on expenditure,” he told me. Inatech has therefore diversified outside the container market and will shortly go live with a major US shipping firm in a different sector. “Inatech remains the market leader in shipping fuel management, but competition is working hard to catch up.”

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On the Techoil side, he sees that the product now has extensive coverage of north American needs from service stations to gathering operations. “It covers everything,” he said. This extensive coverage means that Techoil competes in areas like Filling station inventory management, crude gathering, rack marketing and more and ensures that Techoil is successful in that market. One module of the solution, for example, has proven highly popular that allows drivers, fuel suppliers and filling stations to optimize deliveries and inventories even receiving data from tank radar gauges to help with analysis and inventory predictions.

Inatech plans a major rewrite of the solution starting this fall to modernize the UI and architecture, improve performance and add some new features while striving to get all customers onto a single version. It won several high profiles customers in 2023 and has developed a successful partnership with one of these to help with product strategy. Inatech will also start targeting the Middle East market more actively – including for agri-commodities – in the future with Techoil as he sees significant and growing activity in that region, he said. Meanwhile, the software has also been successful in the bunkering market globally.

 

 

 

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