Enuit Getting the Message Out….
Finding interesting and innovative ways to go to market can be challenging, particularly now in a pandemic when most people cannot travel. It is certainly something I think about, and I know that Enuits’ head of Marketing, Mark Tredway, does too. “Online webinars seem to be the thing at the moment, but there are so many of them that I suspect people are getting a little jaded about attending yet another vendor webinar,” he told me. “GDPR essentially killed off email lists and email as a way to communicate, and with so many webinars, we need to be creative to reach our target market.” One thing that Enuit is doing is working with partners and with thought leaders on trends that industry professionals have an interest in, he said. I share his concerns, and it is one reason we started the CTRMRadio podcast series, for example.
Despite this, he sees the market as active, and Enuit is very busy. “We see lots of RFPs across the board – Refined Products, Natural Gas, Gas and Power, Metals, Petrochemicals and Petroleum and more – across all tiers of the industry. In particular, North America is very active at the moment,” he said. The pattern is repeated in Europe and Asia-Pacific, he told me, and LNG is a considerable area of demand and opportunity, especially in those two markets. “About 60% of the interest coming in via our website originates in North America.” He even mentioned interest originating in Africa as well. But is the interest turning into business? ”There have been a few good deals so far this year,” said Mark “and the pipeline is pretty full across APAC, EMEA, and AMER with some deals close to a decision and others potentially closing nearer to Q3 and Q4”.
“The sales cycles remain complex and might even be longer now,” he told me. “It’s harder to get to a decision point when you can’t have face-to-face in-person meetings, and that certainly is a part of what we are seeing.” He also points to a growing number of potential replacement projects emerging in the market recently, with some companies weighing whether to get off older platforms that are not as agile and more expensive than perhaps some of the more modern solutions.
He is also looking forward to going to market with Enuits’ new Commodity Management platform Entrade Unite. Here Enuit will be doing some of those webinars themselves but with partners and involving a global demonstration of this new product. ComTech will be watching that launch with significant interest as we certainly see a definite trend to want to manage supply chains more efficiently for physical commodities.
