Schifffahrt | Shipping during negotiations to win new charters. As you can see, this approach not only puts the brakes on price-only competition but sets the conditions for reversing the direction of travel and creating a positive feedback loop. People who care… It is also important we demonstrate that ships are being maintained by people who care. Similar technologies can play a role in helping maintain and continually developing the competency of ships’ crews – both the officers on bridge and the engineers working below deck. The long-term goal here isn’t to turn human personnel into dumb automata who only follow the instructions issued to them by some all-knowing machine. On the contrary, the aim is to empower and equip them with new skills and develop new aptitudes and problem-solving abilities to ensure they operate at peak performance and are ready to attend to more sophisticated and automated onboard machinery. The common theme is to make technology work for us – whether in strengthening the interface between the crew and their ship or by forming a closer relationship with our customers, the owners – and not the other way around. The future of ship management does not lie in replacing crew with robots or exchanging the human touch in customer service for bots and apps. In fact, this is quite the opposite. By leveraging technology for a smarter conversation, we end up with a better level of service, a quality collaborative and consultative support infrastructure. Digitalisation has been talked to death in recent years. But to date, it hasn’t produced the advertised results because the implementation has been wrong. Ship managers – and, for that matter, owner operators – are forced into using too many systems from too many vendors. Each solution might be doing its individual job, but because they are not unified, the collective benefits of this technology stack are lost. The extra complexity and workarounds this multi-vendor approach necessitates subtracts values. Coles began his maritime career at sea – from deck officer to captain. He then studied law at Cardiff University and specialised in maritime law with Richards Butler in London before moving to Hong Kong to work for Stephen Harwood & Lo. He joined Pacific Basin in 1995. He later became CEO of Rydex to introduce dedicated email software for maritime communications. This was followed by positions at Sperry Marine and Globe Wireless LLC. He joined Inmarsat in 2011 as Director GX Maritime and was appointed President of the newly formed Inmarsat Maritime Business Unit in the same year. In 2015, Coles joined Transas as CEO and member of the Board of Directors and was appointed President of the Transas Group in May 2018 after Transas was acquired by Wärtsilä. Wallem describes itself as »a leading provider of technology-driven maritime solutions«. The managed fleet recently comprised almost 280 ships, putting it in 4 th place behind V.Group, Anglo-Eastern and Bernhard Schulte Shipmanagement. This ‘stack’ metaphor, which is commonly heard in IT circles, is remarkably apt for a company like Wallem, which in addition to technical management and crewing, offers services supporting the complete lifecycle of a vessel from newbuilding supervision to end-of-life recycling guidance, as well as an extensive portfolio of commercial, safety and compliance management and agency services. Many managers, like Wallem, have industry-leading expertise in supporting owners with legislative issues. Wallem also is providing technology support and consultancy to some of their clients. I find it astonishing... As a full-stack service provider, I therefore find it astonishing that after a fleet reaches a certain size, owners so often decide to bring technical management inhouse. The benefits of outsourcing don’t diminish as a fleet grows in size; in fact, the opposite is true. This behaviour is not evident in other industries. Businesses in all sectors happily outsource accountancy, HR and other functions. Airlines rarely care for their own aircraft anymore. In particular, today’s low-cost carriers wouldn’t remain in business long without third-party vendors able to carry out regular maintenance or periodic overhauls. In e-commerce, a new breed of online retailer doesn’t make or even touch products, instead using social media as a shop front and the likes of Alibaba and AliExpress to fulfil orders. For the vessel owner acting primarily as an asset owner and commercial operator taking on technical services adds inertia to the business. It makes it harder to react to changes in the market to dodge downturns or seize new opportunities. Indeed, the complexities of the regulations, environment and operations of today would seem to demand an outsourced expert to support the business. Everyone else is doing it, but maritime has resisted it. Maybe the »third party ship managers« have to also change their model, to gain their creditability back.n HANSA International Maritime Journal 06 | 2019 21
