Inatech Opens in Houston

Energy trading risk management (ETRM) systems provider Inatech expanded its global operation with a new office in Houston to better support its U.S. clients at a time of unprecedented change in America’s oil markets.

“The U.S. physical oil market is changing from an import market to an export one, and this presents new challenges for oil trading firms in terms of trades, hedging, transporting and accounting for each barrel,” said Inatech’s CEO Jean-Hervé Jenn. “With our new presence on the ground, we will be proactive in grasping the tremendous opportunities presented by the profound change currently underway in U.S. oil trading.”

Part of Glencore (GLCNF)’s oil division, Inatech is a global provider of intelligent cloud-based ETRM and fuel management software to the physical oil trading and marine industries.

While the U.S. has the most mature and competitive market for oil trading, the application of innovative technology hasn’t kept pace, creating an opportunity for Inatech, according to Jenn.

“In terms of technology, you would expect the US oil industry to be the most advanced, but in some respects it has been a fairly conservative market, particularly in the area of cloud-based solutions,” Jenn said. “Understandably, companies are concerned about the need to control their data and have resisted anything that moves files away from their own premises. However, this often increases the security risks and creates inefficiencies. The opportunity for us is to come up with products that enhance both security and efficiency.”

Inatech’s new office will be managed by Praveen Raghavendran, Vice President for Customer Relationships, who is relocating from Inatech’s India Chennai Office. The company is actively recruiting business development and support staff.

Techoil, Inatech’s key ETRM product for the oil trading industry, enables traders to see the profit and loss in real-time on any given trade, and to track the evolution of P&L as variables change such as delivery prices and logistical costs. The full integration between front and back office allows for an accurate inventory management, which has eluded first-generation ETRM systems that are unable to effectively integrate with back office systems. It is through this comprehensive integration that Techoil facilitates fully informed, collective decision-making processes.

“What we’re offering is an integrated solution where the entire organization is on one single platform that runs the business and provides all of the decision support and analysis to generate profits from trading,” Raghavendran said. “This is a clean break from the incumbent situation of different systems being integrated into one another, causing delay in the trade life cycle and P&L generation.”

Techoil also helps from a compliance perspective by demonstrating that robust checks are in place, and creates an auditable system that is necessary for obtaining credit lines from banks – an increasingly vital component for energy trading desks.

“The adoption of new technology that runs throughout an organization is inevitably going to be disruptive,” said Praveen Raghavendran. “But it’s also good for business as it focuses the organization on maximizing profits and minimizing risk.”