Introduction

The 2020 Commodity Technology Advisory’s Vendor Perception Study is a biennial survey and analysis conducted to establish end-user and market influencer perceptions of the CTRM vendors, and to determine market leadership perceptions as well as buying criteria and brand awareness of the different vendors. As in previous years, the research survey was comprised of a comprehensive set of questions that CTRM end-users and industry consultants were invited to answer. CTRM system vendors were explicitly excluded from participating and ComTech analysts were diligent in ensuring no responses from any vendor representatives were included in the final results. The survey was open for responses during the Spring of 2020 and ultimately collected some 290 validated and usable responses.

The survey was promoted in several ways to attract bona fide respondents. ComTech Advisory used email notification, Linkedin posts, blog articles, banner advertising and verbal requests to encourage responses. CTRM vendors and service providers also promoted the survey of their own accord. Some 762 people opened the survey instrument over an 89-day period in the Spring, while 322 of those attempted to complete all the questions in the survey (42%). Many of the 762 opted out at the privacy notice without answering any questions at all, while others answered some, but not all questions. These incomplete responses were discarded as it was made clear in the survey preamble and instructions that only complete survey responses would be used. Compared to the last Vendor Perception Study conducted in 2018, response counts were up significantly over 2018 (195 responses) and in fact, it was a record response for this type of study. We believe that this may have been due in part to the COVID-19 lockdown that took place over the late Spring period.

ComTech was extremely rigorous in validating the complete responses and in the end, utilized only 290 (38% of total questionnaire opens and 90% of completed surveys) in the results presented below. Reasons for rejecting responses included: 1. The respondent worked for a vendor. Despite instructions to discourage vendor representative responses, ComTech eliminated several such responses. These included responses that were obviously by vendor staff using a vendor email address and several that were from vendor personnel using a private email or alternate addresses, 2. Duplicate responses were eliminated, 3. Finally, suspicious responses were eliminated.

These included those with fictitious email addresses, names or company names, or those lacking any validation data.

The remaining 290 responses were deemed to be valid and were compiled in our analysis and the results presented and discussed in this report.

This pool of valid respondents was comprised of 71% end-users and 29% influencers (consultants/advisors), which is a record percentage of end-user responses when compared to previous VPS surveys. Again, we think this may be due in part to these CTRM system working from home during the lockdown.

Vendor perceptions are interesting both in terms of how well a vendor is known in the market and as to how that vendor is viewed by those that are at least aware of it and its products. However, vendor perceptions invariably lag current reality in that the opinions expressed in the data effectively represent views of past performance. This means that it is equally important to look at trends in vendor perception through time. We have done this by utilizing similar historical data collected and analyzed by ComTech and CommodityPoint over the last decade or so. This trend data is presented and discussed within this report.

The CTRM software sector has experienced many significant M&A events and this survey also gives us a chance to look at historical brand strength. In analyzing the results, we have sometimes looked at the data in two ways - first, in terms of the company or brand names actually used by the respondents (e.g. OpenLink, Allegro, SolArc); and second, by rolling up and consolidating the various related names that are part of a singular entity (e.g. Openlink, Allegro, etc. are consolidated under ION). This allows us to thoroughly examine brand historical awareness and make past comparisons.

Given that perceptions will lag current conditions, this report, representing vendor perceptions prior to midyear 2020, should be but only one of many data points used by anyone looking for an ETRM or CTRM software solution as events and vendor performance can and will change very rapidly in this software category.