Dycotrade Heads to the Cloud
A couple of days ago, I spoke with Mr. Arie Willem van der Plas, co-Managing Director at Dycotrade. Our conversation started by addressing the implications of announcement by Microsoft back in March this year regarding the availability of its next-generation cloud ERP solution, Microsoft Dynamics AX, built on and for Microsoft Azure, in 137 markets in 40 languages. The announcement also stated that “the new Dynamics AX moves beyond traditional business solutions and brings ERP, business intelligence, infrastructure and database services together in a single offering, empowering organizations to run industry-specific and operational business processes that are extendable with specific solutions from partners.”
Dycotrade, as a Microsoft solution partner, gains many advantages from announcements like this, Mr. van der Plas told me due to its tight connections with the MS Dynamics AX platform. The cloud version (multi-tenanted) of its solution on the new MS platform is now running on trial at the first customer site and the company is engaged in moving rapidly to the new platform. It already has a number of customers utilizing Dycotrade in the private cloud in a hosted-type environment and is also working on a hybrid cloud/hosted version.
Dycotrade is seeing interest in cloud-delivered solutions now and in the recent past, though remarked Mr. van der Plas, the commodities industry has been slower on the uptake than several other vertical industries. He also cited Microsoft’s massive $15 billion investment in the cloud and its power to move markets.
Generally, Dycotrade has seen a steady market for its software and has made gains in the USA and Europe in recent months and years in soft commodities and metals industries in particular. He sees a robust pipeline and expects to sign 2-3 deals in Q1 and again in Q2 next year. Dycotrade is now over 50-employees and growing, he told us.
Dycotrade also sees the trading side of the business as quite soft right now in terms of demand for software. Most traction is on the physical supply-chain heavy producer, processor, and consumer side and also where that type of entity has set up a trading arm. He points to issues like reporting, time to market and traceability, as being drivers for demand; pointing to the fact that these companies need to be fully in control from a logistical and financial perspective and that time scales are shortening.
Dycotrade has been busy making enhancements to its product also in the areas of reporting, traceability, quality management, position management, transportation and futures and options, among other areas. Next to these enhancements other functions were added specifically for Metals trading, including Concentrates, Pricing, Pledging as well as Cost Price- and Weight adjustments.
Arie Willem However, pointed out that Dycotrade has the luxury of being able to focus on its product while Microsoft provides the architecture and a lot of important ERP and other functionality. “This means that Dycotrade can achieve a lot with fewer resources and be more competitive than many CTRM software businesses.”
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