Jason Sawchuk said that it’s not what they do, it’s how they do it at Egistix.
Sawchuk, who is on the executive leadership team at the Calgary-based energy trading logistics company, said other companies also provide energy trading and risk management software to oil and gas companies. Those companies, however, tend to focus on the accounting side of moving oil and gas, and less on the actual movement.
“What you can do in our tool, as an example, that you can’t in others is you can see your products,” he said.
“You can see it from battery, wells onto a pipeline, down transmission. So, we have a lot of visualizations, and the accounting activities are a byproduct of your commercial transaction.”
At its core, Egistix manages the order-to-cash process for commodities. Once there’s a contract for a commodity, they track the movement of that commodity through the process, to the final cash exchange at the end of the transaction.
Sawchuk’s been in the energy industry for the past 25 years, specializing in energy trading and risk management. He’s seen and used all the different platforms for commodity handling, and he wanted something clearer and simpler.
“We’ve taken a view of… what if the technology that you’re engaging with your workplace to do your job is as simple and intuitive as an app on your smartphone,” he said.
Kaylee Michaleski, who handles product development at Egistix, and who at one point was an Egistix user through her work in oil and gas, said they’re building a new system that helps eliminate some of the “boring” admin tasks that go with the logistics of moving energy products.
“I was a scheduler for two years, and there’s so many aspects of that job that are just manual entry,” she said.
“But there’s also so many parts of that job that really require looking at what those numbers mean, and you don’t have time to do that when you’re just looking at printouts of everything.”
Breaking out of the echo chamber
Though both Sawchuk and Michaleski have been in the oil and gas industry for some time, that lends itself to being in an echo chamber, Sawchuk said.
Egistix has an established product in the market, but they’re pivoting into a new focus with new customers and driving innovation. To that end they’re still a start-up, he said.
Their work in the Alberta Catalyzer – Velocity program has helped prep them to tackle those new challenges. Whether that’s a business plan, marketing plan, checking blind spots or prepping for a capital raise, Sawchuk said that the program’s been extremely valuable in creating a foundation.
“Those are things that while we’re singularly focused on product and development and testing, there’s a whole world around that, how does the business grow and scale,” he said.
“We’ve been really strong on the product side. What we’re trying to do is build our other muscles, so to speak. So, it’s been really powerful.”
Michaleski said that as they’ve continued along the path of business development, there have been some growing pains along the way and it’s helped provide the organization with different perspectives.
In the foreseeable future, Sawchuk said they’re going to focus on the rollout of the new system. He said there hasn’t been a lot of innovation in the energy logistics space for more than 10 years.
From there, they want to move beyond oil and gas into other commodity areas. That includes garbage hauling, fertilizer and others. He believes they have an innovative system to do it.
“There has not been a disrupter in this space for a long period of time, and we feel that we’re well positioned to be that disrupter,” he said.
“So, kind of going back to why bother building a better mousetrap? I think we’re building a different, better mousetrap.”
