Previse Systems Looks West While Expanding it's European Base

We’re pleased to share that Previse Systems is featured in CTRM Center’s latest blog post: Previse Systems Looks West While Building it's European Base

Gary Vasey from Commodity Technology Advisory spoke with Marc Zumstein, Chief Revenue Officer at Previse Systems.

I had an extremely interesting discussion with Previse Systems’ Marc Zumstein recently. Previse Systems is a relatively new entrant into the power & gas E/CTRM marketplace that innovated a novel approach to how it went to market and has probably outperformed expectations. Previse does very well in Europe generally and has several announcements in the works, he said. In recent years, it has also emerged strongly in our vendor perception studies as being perceived as both a market leader and innovator – especially in Europe.  

Part of the conversation centered around the different regional markets. For example, the German-speaking market in Europe has proven to be quite opaque to many non-German vendors while trying to deploy ETRM solutions designed for the European power market into North America or vice versa has always been problematic. 

Previse has enjoyed a robust installed base in German-speaking markets as well as other parts of Europe and currently “has a strong set of opportunities in that region.” While some of this strength is attributable to legacy competitor performance and other issues in the region, it is also partly down to being able to cater specifically for that market. It has a German version of its website and employs German speakers and “can sell, contract and implement in German when needed,” he told me. Having a web-based UI that can be readily translated into German by browsers or plugins is also a useful feature. “For example, Back Office specialists in Stadwerke often struggle with English, so having an easy way to translate the UI with local browser-based tools or plugins is helpful,” he said.  

However, while this is an important aspect of its German business, it is Previse’s flexible models, technology and go-to-market approach that truly differentiates it. This flexibility and ability to model markets has also led to it establishing a US presence recently. "We already have several colleagues hired in the US  and plan to continue preparing our North American market entry," he confirmed. The strategy, he said, was to identify tech-savvie first movers willing to work with Previse to round out its solution with the remaining 20% of American functionality. 

In terms of entering other regional markets, Marc, in part, credits its flexible market model approach that supports different regional trading structures (Europe vs US vs other markets), giving it the ability to successfully offer its solution in multiple markets. "Previse built different market models for different regions (Electricity Europe, Electricity North America, Natural Gas Europe, Natural Gas North America and so on) with distinct topologies and data points," he explained, pointing out that its founders had gained invaluable experience in how to tackle this in their previous roles working with solutions that were designed specifically for one market model. "The approach allows expansion to new markets like Japan or Australia with dedicated market models rather than forcing regions into the same software settings."