Fendahl Sees Very Active Market
I recently had a catch-up call with Fendahl’s Henry Thornalley. He told me just how busy the last few months have been for the company – so much so that some employees had to postpone their vacations! Fendahl, he says, is working on a number of important RFPs while fielding a record numbers of inquiries and demo requests – “demos are booking a month in advance,” he told me. So, what is going on I asked? Henry told me that the market is generally very active with quite a number of larger opportunities in flow along with much interest generally in CTRM. Fendahl have also signed a number of new customers so far this year with hopes to sign several more, he said, with some significant announcements in the pipeline. In addition, a number of existing customers have chosen to extend their use of Fusion into other geographies and/or commodities. “Despite what now looks like a slowish start to the year, it is rapidly turning into one of the better years in recent memory for CTRM software demand.”
What he is seeing is a lot of replacements taking place and these, he says, take longer in terms of sales cycles as the buyer is often extremely cautious – perhaps a case of once bitten, twice shy. Often, the buyer will also demand a phase 1 fixed price design and blueprint phase to help gain increased confidence in the vendors and its ability to deliver, he said. An area where he is seeing significantly increased demand is in ags and softs, and in south Africa in particular. However, demand seems stronger in most areas. On the back of this, Fendahl has been hiring. It has taken on new staff in India, but also in the US where it has hired sales and sales support staffs, and also in the middle East. Henry says that while Fendahl has relied on word of mouth in the past, it is now building up its marketing and sales presence with an aim to generate leads in a proactive manner as well.
On the development front, it has now completed the build out of a browser-based UI and has customers already using it. It is also working hard with Microsoft to add copilot-like functionality to reporting. This will allow plain English queries to assemble reports – not just of data within Fusion but also from the internet. It has also been hard at work updating its certifications and compliance in areas like ISO approvals and with Sox1 and Sox2, he reports.
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