Page 46: of Maritime Reporter Magazine (March 2011)

46 Maritime Reporter & Engineering News

The maritime industry is generally re- garded as conservative, particularly in re- gards to adoption of new technologies. As your company/product is squarely in the “new tech” niche, what is your assessment of the industry’s adoption of software so- lutions?

Hughey, ABS NS For a long time this was true, but I believe this is changing.

We have seen a growing adoption of fully integrated fleet management tools glob- ally. In the past, best of breed standalone systems were the approach and widely accepted in the industry. However, much of our growth is due to more and more companies requesting an integrated solu- tion such as ours that can manage their fleet’s total performance. They are also looking for a company that will be around as long as they are and ABS pro- vides that stability.

Carbone, Ship Decision Most of the ex- ecutives I meet are well aware that im- proved technology can be advantageous, yet they are reasonably careful about ex- ploring their options. There is an under- standable level of apprehension when a business owner considers moving from a system they’ve used for many years to a new generation solution, even if the old system has ceased to keep pace with their needs. Executives remember the experi- ence of investing in old generation solu- tions that required long and expensive implementation phases. In our case, by understanding the unique needs and time pressures of maritime clients, we’ve cre- ated a solution that is intuitive to use and easy to transition to in a very short period of time.

Soncini, SpecTecThe maritime world is almost neatly divided in two: those who believe that IT is strategic to the devel- opment of their company, and those who don’t. From the outside, the difference is staggering. You can go into a company which makes use of IT in a deep, intelli- gent way, and you can see how well it works; then you just go across the road, and you find a team of Luddities who ba- sically resist IT with all their strengths.

During the crisis period, most of these companies have failed, and “pour cause”, as it is virtually impossible today to prop- erly manage a shipping company without making use of proper IT infrastructure.

And by this I mean proper software and proper hardware. It is absolutely amazing to see some people going around with the latest iPhone or iPad, but then pretend that our software would work on PCs on board which are seven years old! In one case, a new manager of a fleet which was making good use of our software strongly insisted to revert to a paper based system.

Can you imagine this happening in any airline or even land based industry? Yet in shipping everything is possible. My personal opinion is that as the market will be getting more and more hard and regu- lated, only the companies with a strong

IT philosophy will survive.

Galatas, Marine CFO Workboat op- erators are notoriously skeptical of new technologies. These companies are hard- core operators by nature and therefore tend to spend new dollars on hard assets that offer a definitive ROI, which is un- derstandable. Our niche market, soft- ware, presents a difficult ROI calculation for owners and operators of marine equipment. It is obvious that workboat companies want to make a move to oper- ating software but calculating value re- ceived in order to justify the investment is tricky. As the adoption of technology permeates the industry the data available to support these types of decisions will make investments easier to quantify and support.

Bremner, Multi Service Due to its conservative nature, the shipping and bunkering industry do generally tend to adopt new technology at a more meas- ured rate than many other industries.

This conservatism is for good reason, as the consequences of accidents or mistakes of any kind in the maritime industry can be severe, so ship owners want to be sure that whatever new technology they are considering is going to produce the outcomes claimed with no adverse side effects.

Specifically, what niche of the global maritime industry do you supply?

Galatas, Marine CFO MarineCFO primarily serves the workboat market.

This is a niche not served by full ERP vendors and is a largely untapped market.

We have custom solutions for different segments of the work book market in- cluding general towing, oil field supply vessel, inland and offshore liquid trans- portation and bulk cargoes. We target companies that require custom processes and workflow in order to properly streamline their operations. MarineCFO modules assist in client operations from personnel, operations, maintenance, ves- sel data and core financial management.

Carbone, Ship Decision We are in the business of helping you organize and make sense of all your digital informa- tion. Our system pulls together data from multiple sources, processes it, and makes it available in a very powerful consoli- dated view – and that view helps you make informed decisions to run your business.

Soncini, SpecTecWe work with all type of vessels, and in the Oil & Gas and

Navies sectors. It is not well known but our product AMOS is used by five

Navies, and the trend is growing.

Büssow, GL We supply fleet man- agement and ship operations solutions to

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No matter your need, the advent of modern software solutions onboard ships and boats rapidly advances in step with shoreside options. Maritime Reporter & Engineering News gathered software solution providers for in- sights on new technology in the pipeline in 2011 and beyond. — by Greg Trauthwein

The Participants

ABS Nautical Systems

Karen Hughey, President & COO

Germanischer Lloyd SE

Dr. Torsten Büssow, Vice President,

Head of Maritime Software

Marine CFO

Joe Galatas, President,

Multi Service

James Bremner, Business Develop- ment Manager, Commercial Maritime

Payment System,

ShipDecision

Albert Carbone, CEO,

SpecTec

Giampiero Soncini, CEO

Veson Nautical

Jamie Sheldon, IMOS

Product Director