Value Creed is growing and has found new success in a pandemic year
As we’ve mentioned before on this blog, Value Creed, a Dallas-headquartered firm, began as a hosting/managed services provider for Allegro users several years ago, augmenting their revenues with some project consulting. I recently caught up with Priyankar Datta, Value Creed’s Managing Director, to get an update on their activities and how they have continued to adapt their business model after the acquisition of Allegro by ION…and particularly considering the pandemic.
According to Priyankar, with Value Creed’s remote services model in which they have resources in both the US and India, they’ve done well in market that has been almost entirely reliant on remote delivery and have expanded their services offerings opportunistically by responding to customer requests for additional services and expertise. In fact, they have more than double in size since the end of 2019 and now have 29 employees split between the US and India – positioning them as one of the winners in the COVID ear.
Priyankar noted that earlier this year they were approached by one of their larger customers who was looking for additional help to address shortfalls in capacity and skills in their liquids group. After trying to hire experienced resources, they were coming up short and their business was struggling to address the workload, particularly in their scheduling group. “Working with our client, we developed our Business Process Outsourcing solution and were able to leverage several of our highly experienced resources to address our client’s needs for additional capacity during peak times. Though we didn’t make a strategic decision to pursue outsourcing as an offering, our customer presented us with a need and we were able to devise what we would term a “practical approach” to outsourcing, one that provides the necessary capabilities, not one that attempts to displace any of the customer’s resources. With our ability to provide 24-hour global coverage and modulate the workloads of our employees, we were able to meet our customers’ needs and continue to support our existing managed services customers without any impact. Though this is a relatively new offering for us, it is a model that we think will provide significant value to companies that have struggled to address peak staffing needs at a much lower cost trying to hire full-time resources or going with a traditional outsourcing model.”
They are also finding additional success with their managed services offering as their customers’ software needs change. The ION acquisitions have been somewhat disruptive in that customers of those acquired products are rethinking their ETRM infrastructures as ION continues to realign their product strategy. With more products available under the ION banner, those customers may find they have more opportunity to either replace an existing ION acquired system with another, or others may view this time as an opportunity to look at other vendors as well. Priyankar cited as an example, one of their customers, a very large fuel distributor, who found themselves in the position of needing to move from one ION product (Allegro) to another (RightAngle) to better match their evolving functional needs. “They were given the opportunity to move to RightAngle on favorable terms, and as we were supporting them with a number of managed services as an Allegro user company, they asked us to assist in the move and provide similar services once they complete that transition. We do anticipate we will see others as well shifting from one ION product to another.”
Given their increasing depth of resources and growing experience across several CTRM platforms, it’s clear they have found new growth opportunities outside of their past Allegro-centric focus, even in a pandemic impacted market. Their recently developed out-sourcing model seems particularly interesting in a market where peak staffing needs often outstrip available resources…and is certainly a service offering we will be keeping an analyst eye on.
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