ComFin in Vienna is a software vendor that has been around for quite some time. Originally serving the liquid hydrocarbon markets with a software product called The Bulldog, it developed Comcore as its cloud or on premises CTRM solution for the future just a few years ago. I spoke with its’ CEO, Gerald Neher, recently to catch up and find out how the company was faring. Currently, it is seeing some uncertainty in the market, he told me. “Volatility and supply chain issues along with increased difficulty with financing is having an impact,” he said. Despite that, ComFin is seeing interest in its solutions, and it now offers its solution across ags and metals as well as energy.
One of its current projects is a very large project in India where it is migrating the customer from the Bulldog to Comcore for oil, LNG, products and coal. “We can build a lot of apps on top of Comcore very quickly,” he said. It is also engaged in other projects in areas like shipping (inspection) and has completed delivery of a fully multi-lingual UI in which individual users can set their own language for the interface. “This is extremely useful in places like Asia and South America where users want to see a solution that is labelled in their own language.”
These days, Gerald is content not to try to grow the business too much but rather to remain a vendor serving 10-20 customers. “We can select our projects to some extent and so we select projects that are good for our software. Some clients come and some go,” he told me. Meanwhile, he is interested in building out the consulting side of the business both directly and via consulting partners. In that regard, he is proud that some external consulting entities use Comcore for training sessions. “It’s been mutually beneficial as we know oil and products very well yet have been able to get expert help in ags and metals this way.”
He is also pleased to see events starting up again post-COVID. He was in Spain recently at a conference and he could see a renewed appetite for industry get togethers he told me. Meanwhile, ComFin has started to produce a monthly newsletter. The idea being to cover a new topic of interest every month for its customers and prospects and drive further interest in the consulting side of things.
