EnergyTech member
eCerto
Steve Shearman – Founder & Managing Director, Luis Ibarra – Founder & Technology Director and José (Mabo) Boccardo – Founder & Advisory Director chat to Eagle Labs EnergyTech about eCERTO.
Tell us about your business.
At eCERTO, we bring together groundbreaking technology, domain expertise and innovation to transform the financial performance of capital projects across industries. INTEGRATI™ is the Smart eCommerce Platform that streamlines the procurement process from end-to-end, delivering cost certainty, trust, and value to project owners and contractors, enabling collaboration through digital transformation. Our proprietary technology consists of three modules: Strategy Definition, eCommerce and Project Execution. By harnessing the power of cloud computing, AI and distributed ledgers, INTEGRATI™ combines commercial model innovation with dynamic pricing to define, agree and execute procurement strategies that deliver 30% cost reduction to project owners while achieving 20-80% margin protection for contractors. Our eADVISORY™ services support our client's needs at every stage of their capital projects. Our offerings include 360º Project Assessments, training workshops, project management mentoring, and Project Management Office support. Our team of highly skilled and experienced advisors is ready to transform quality decision making across the life of a project.
When did you start your business?
We became eCERTO in 2019, when eCAPITAL HOLDINGS LIMITED was incorporated to acquire eCERTO ENERGY LIMITED (formerly M&P Oil and Gas Solutions Limited, incorporated in 2016).
What's been your biggest highlight?
There have been key highlights over the years, such as landing our first advisory contract, receiving 15 Letters of Interest from energy companies, partnering with STC-INSISO and IBM to develop our proprietary technology, securing access to client data and completing an oversubscribed investment round with our core team. Nevertheless, the continued highlight is the support we have received and are still receiving from the Innovation Ecosystem in the North East of Scotland. To date, we have completed the TechX accelerator, we are part of Scottish Enterprise's High Growth Ventures portfolio, and, more recently, we have joined EnergyTech. As an early-stage start-up, these programmes have played a crucial role in steering eCERTO to where we are today by providing vital strategic and financial support, besides giving us access to a network of peer startups, prospective partners and clients that is enabling a route to market for INTEGRATI™.
What's been your biggest challenge?
Overcoming the combined effect of a pandemic and the historical crash in oil and gas prices. As a pre-revenue startup, in 2020, the advent of COVID-19 torpedoed many advisory deals we were near closing and pushed back to 2021 grant funding required to progress the development of our technology. We embraced the challenge by developing an industry-agnostic proposition that allowed us to target the offshore wind market, secured financial resources from Scottish Enterprise to redesign our technology offering and the commitment of a talented team to make things happen. In 2021, we are focused on building resilience by undertaking a Pre-SEED investment round to accelerate the development of INTEGRATI™ with the client data we have already secured. The biggest challenge ahead remains securing wider support from energy companies to gain access to the data required to demonstrate the significant value to be delivered to their organisations and our scalability potential across the sector.
Advice for entrepreneurs starting out
There are more things to do in a startup than people to them. Define your priorities clearly and deliver on them with laser focus. Be ruthless when prioritising and make cash resilience the top priority.