Author: Dr. Gary M. Vasey
Publication: CTRM Center
Our industry is one in which personal connections are important and recently I heard from someone I had worked with several years ago as you often do. Tony Chapman wrote to let me know he was with a consulting firm by the name of Singa Associates. Singa Associates is based in Switzerland, and it offers a variety of services to commodity trading firms. Founded by Valter Marques, CEO, it offers services such as software selection and implementation while trying to help clients maximize business value. I recently spoke to Valter and Tony to find out more about the firm.
Valter started the firm around a decade ago after working in commodities – cotton specifically – and being involved in internal development of a CTRM solution. He started by getting involved in software selection and implementation and offered a service to review failed implementations. This looked at what went wrong and if these issues could be fixed and the project salvaged. In performing these kinds of services along with selections and implementations, Singa associates developed its own methodology for CTRM selection. “We developed an approach and a toolset to help select CTRM solutions that was designed around ensuring requirement relevance and importance. Too many firms build a library of requirements and continue to add to that. These need to be reviewed for relevance to the client’s operations. Our approach involves a value for money assessment as well,” he told me.
With a strong background in CTRM and commodities, Singa Associates feel that they really know the vendors and products on the market as well.
Usually, the selection leads into an implementation as well and so Singa offers those services. Here, it also goes a step further and has developed a BI solution to enhance reporting that can be plugged into the CTRM, they told me. This is a reporting layer that provides role-specific dashboards and reporting. Another area that they get involved in is post-implementation support.
The firm has grown and succeeded via its experience in commodities, commodity trading and CTRM, Valter told me. It also sees use of its methodology as a differentiator as it focuses on developing the requirements effectively and specifically to the business and is described as ‘quite comprehensive’ by Valter. Finally, they say that they have developed trust and solid relationships from the work they have done, and this reputation helps them gain new clients.
