Ito van Lanschot had struggled during his entire tenure as CEO of Nidera to obtain complete and accurate daily reports on business and global positions, risk exposures and performance. No CTRM, ERP or other technology provider could offer a comprehensive, easy to implement and price attractive solution. Talking to peers in the commodities industry, he realized that everyone had similar issues. Born out of frustration but most of all eagerness to solve this challenge, he founded Commodity Services and Solutions in 2010, which was renamed Tradesparent in 2016 (now RadarRadar), a software solution for the commodities industry that just works, run by experts who understand the future trends of the industry, its language, business rules and idiosyncrasies.
The story behind RadarRadar
Dec 7, 2020 - Rotterdam, The Netherlands
The story
After 30 years operating in the Agri-trading and processing industry, I was headhunted by a US energy company to manage their European power generation and wholesale business which included 2400 MW, 13 plants power generation and heat portfolio in the Netherlands. The mandate was to convert this former utility company into a commercial and dynamic organization.
During my time as trader and manager in the agroindustry, I spend countless hours to run administrative processes to produce purchases and sales overviews, risk exposure and estimated p/l reports manually and with Excel. Automation was for the finance departments and we, the commercial front office, were working with Lotus Notes, Excel and electronic Reuter screens. Since our industry prides itself of traditions and way-of-doing things, this process continues in most companies.
“Reporting was taking endless hours, accumulating information and data, input in Excel, apply formulas and then spend again endless hours, solving errors, and discussing with other departments, offices and controllers whose figures and reports were right. What a waste of time and money!”
When I started to work for the energy company, I entered the world of technology where engineers were running the show instead of the traders in the world where I was coming from. In other words, processes were structured and executed in a disciplined manner. As products and contracts were fixed for a very long-term (PPAs for power were often for 10 years and for gas for 20 or more years), they needed to be modeled and structured so that risk, exposure and performance could be assessed and managed.
Furthermore, since Gas and E-programs needed to be properly planned and timely presented to grid-company (on a daily basis for the next day for balancing purposes), technology played a crucial role to make sure that the Gas-balancing and E-programs were properly executed otherwise huge fines had to be paid. Therefore, like in the finance industry, reporting was done on a real-time basis.
It was an excellent process and a good organization in a disciplined industry but rigid and not very dynamic so that its products and services came with a high price and wide margins for risk mitigation and little flexibility.
Due to the liberalization of the power markets in the late 90’s and early 00’s, the commercial elements of trading gas and power were added to make the process more dynamic and seek for portfolio optimization opportunities both for plants and products. For this we developed new products such as the trading of the spark spread and reversing the spark spread (buying power and selling the fuel in the liberated markets when the conversion margins are below cost).
By that time, the energy industry suffered from the demise of Enron, it had given a wealth of experience and insights in new methods and ways of working, which I put to practice upon my return to the Agri-industry.
I took along a number of professionals from the energy industry, which needed to adapt to the informal, traditional and rather opportunistic culture of the agri-business. Through careful but persistent change management, the organization adapted itself to new disciplines, which resulted in excellent results for the company.
The key challenge
The largest challenge though was to find a software vendor, which had the necessary solution and who understood the agri-business. A careful, lengthy and costly acquisition process was started which turned out to be disastrous as for all the promises of the various vendors, it became apparent that their product was often still in development stage and had not matured and worst of all, they understood little to nothing of the business, let alone of the new trends and dynamics of portfolio optimization. The implementation processes were lengthy and hurting the daily operations and despite of all the rigid planning, were always substantially over budget both in time and costs.
“It was then that I realized that there was a need and an opportunity to develop software for the commodity industry, which was made by commodity industry experts who understood the future trends of the industry, its language, business rules and idiosyncrasies”.
In 2010, I founded Commodity Services and Solutions, which was renamed Tradesparent in 2016 (now RadarRadar): a successful software developer, vendor and advisor for the commodity industry. Within a short period of time, we were up and running providing advice and solutions to Roquette Freres SA, in Lille, France, an esteemed and continuing supportive client for all these years. Later followed by BayWa, Bunge, and Cargill and recently ADM. All of our clients prize our products and services for its innovation, non-intrusive implementations and expertise.
Becoming a data-driven company
By turning your data into trusted information in the right location at the right time, the Radar Engine enables you to tackle your business’ challenges from a data perspective, creating a competitive advantage and improving overall performance.
Industry’s first automated collaborative data management platform with sophisticated margin management tools.