Page 35: of Marine News Magazine (February 2012)
Inland Bulk Transportation
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maintains that the system is now evolving into the industry standard for communications, adhering toANSI standard practices for trading partners. Introduced in 2006, BargeEx is open and available to all inland waterway operating compa- nies. Consolidated Grain and Barge Company, a subsidiary of CGB Enterprises, Inc., joined this effort in early 2006 as the initial BargeEx service provider. Boatracsprides itself in being pri-vately owned, nimble, responsive and in essence, acts as the ?IT? depart- ment for many of its clients. Boatracshas been providing integrated com- munications solutions for over 20 years to connect fleets with their shore-side offices and improving operational efficiencies. Building the right solution for each customer, Boatracs works as a partner to evalu- ate business and fleet requirements, and then selecting the componentsthat offer the most cost-effective and comprehensive bundle. Their menu is a wide one.Noting the sometimes vast differ- ences between software and operating environments between blue and brown water operators, Boatracs CEO Irwin Rodrigues says, ?Some programs take millions of dollars and multi-years to install. How much time to get value? Inland operators typically can?t afford either. And typi- cally, customers don?t have IT depart- ments.?Boatracs also provides cost-effective two-way satellite communicationssystems, as well as cutting-edge oper- ational management software to the small and mid-sized commercial workboats. One can use one without the other, but Boatracs? evolving rela- tionship with KVH provides real value to customers. Boatracs software is easy to install, and changes to the configuration canbe made remotely. The shoreside WEB-based, hosted servers are redundant and robust. Customers can send data back and forth using a pro- prietary mobile communication ter- minal system, if no PC is on board. Customers, if they so choose can attach a PC and use cellular air cards, too. For forward looking customers with Subchapter M in mind, BTForms facilitates easy implementa- tion, when it happens. Boatracscharges a monthly fee for BTForms; the communications module costs abit more. United Barge Lines (UBL), an inland barging group, had been a cus- tomer of Boatracs for 14 years when BTForms became available as a new product in 2010. At that time, UBL was using a paper version of a Master?s Daily Log which the captain completed daily. The process was inefficient for a number of reasons; lack of standardization and the high volume of data being accomplished in a manual format, among them.Searching for a new solution that would make it easier for captains towww.marinelink.com MN35State of the Art Management Software State of the Art Management Software Fleet & Harbor Services Fleet & Harbor Services Terminal Management Terminal Management Freight Services Freight Services Towing Towing Innovative Ideas Solid Solutionswww.csgsolu ons.com www.csgsolu ons.com 12400 Olive Blvd 12400 Olive Blvd Suite 505, St. Louis, MO Suite 505, St. Louis, MO 800-469-9910 800-469-9910 sales@csgsolu ons.com sales@csgsolu ons.com CORNERSTONESOLUTIONS GROUPSOFTWARE TECHNOLOGYEdoc is set to release the new HelmOnboard (pictured), Edoc?s on-vessel soft-ware, as Helm Executive Dashboard, amodule that gives users the ability to pullup graphical results from analytical andtrending data on one screen.MN#2 (32-43):MN 2011 Layouts 2/3/2012 11:42 AM Page 35