Agiboo Goes from Strength to Strength – Interview Dr. Gary Vasey – CTRMCenter

Jan van den Brom, Managing Partner of Agiboo, has seen interest surge over the usually quiet summer months “Interest is up 300-400% through July and August’, he said. The demand is not just coming from prospective customers but from existing customers as well as they extend use of Agiblocks to other departments and users he told me. “We signed 4 new customers in the last two months!” he said. “Not just in Europe but in Singapore and Africa as well and we covered some new commodities like vegetable oils.” The demand, we agreed, seems to have increased as some firms who sat on the fence and waited to see what would happen with lockdowns and COVID19 freezing expenditures and projects, are now forced to hop off the fence combined with the expanded use by other businesses seeing remote working continuing through the winter and beyond. “People who were not used to working from home actually like it and management have now learned it has advantages too”, he said.

Great changes in a short time

It’s not just activity levels that have changed since we last talked but there has been a lot of activity at Agiboo over the summer. It has opened a north American office with representation in Chicago, transitioned the product over to Azure for increased scalability and other benefits, transitioned to a transaction-based costing model and much more. “Transactional pricing suits smaller companies who want to pay for usage based on transaction volume and want to grow into our software,” he said. Agiboo also went live with its first grains origination customer in north America and now covers origination and trading for grains.

Remote implementation is highly doable, Jan told me. “In fact, as luck would have it, we had remote implemented a Vienna-based sugar trader last year for other reasons and so when March 2020 came along, this was already something we knew how to do.” All implementations are now remotely done and “there is greater trust in IT as a result,” he believes.

Agroforce Commodities

Agroforce Commodities, SA recently also signed up with Agiboo. Agroforce is a soft commodities trading company based in Geneva, Switzerland. It is specialized in sourcing, marketing and shipping for the cocoa and chocolate industry. Jan pointed out the case study around the project on Agiboo’s website as an example of how Agiboo is delivering and doing it fast and efficiently. It contains the following interesting observation from Van der Flier of Agroforce about CTRM and Agiboo. “Of course, there are the obvious characteristics; any software solution should feature any and all variables and properties related to commodity trading; it needs to be auditable, which is to say banks should be able to verify it as a reliable product; and you should be able to link it, directly or indirectly, to your accountancy system in order to reduce manual maneuvers there as well. But the key component for me is that the system matches all the intricacies of the industry, in much the same way that our previous software does not. The cocoa trade – the beans and the products – is very peculiar and very specific. Your software should reflect that and have all those variables and requisites built-in to allow you the freedom and flexibility necessary to do your job as a commodity trader.” It sums up quiet neatly much of what Jan has told us about Agiboo’s approach and his founding goals.

The post Agiboo Goes from Strength to Strength has been written for CTRMCenter by Gary Vasey.