Still trying to leverage digital in your operations? Create your own advantage

The digital transformation in shipping can both offer opportunities and create operational challenges. The need to harvest the right data for disparate functions – performance, asset management, and regulatory compliance – and then present it in the right format at the right time calls for expertise that many vessel operators do not hold in house.

This fragmented picture across different operating functions means that more than ever, vessel operators require a platform provider to help shoulder the burden and enable them to focus more on their core roles.

The ability to create that peace of mind, promote safety and create commercial opportunity is a task that requires a software partner whose knowledge extends way beyond the code and deeply into the details of today’s vessel operations.

The drive to combine maritime domain experience with true Software-as-a-Service expertise has driven ABS Wavesight to consider how to help owners, managers and operators better capture the opportunity of digitalization without getting lost in the process that used to characterise large scale ‘IT projects’.

The primary goal is simply to recognise the elements that need to be brought together and to do so in a way that makes sense to users; that not just simplifies, but which allows the team to see the data they need at the right time.

Bringing these elements together finally enables data-driven decisions that can enhance safety and create operational advantages.

Our recently announced ABS Wavesight Advantage™ platform is the result of our thinking about how to improve the process. Built on state-of-the-art SaaS technology, it leverages ABS’ decades of experience in safety and compliance.

Advantage additionally offers a digital connection to ABS emissions verification, providing a one-stop solution that leverages a modern user interface to deliver AI-driven insights for smarter decisions.

By managing a fleet on the platform, vessel operators can act positively to help reduce both their compliance exposure and performance risk, with accurate and transparent reporting, that can lead to safer, more sustainable and profitable operations.

The Advantage interface features an intuitive design to allow for easy adoption and a streamlined user experience. By combining data from sources such as noon reports users are provided with quick and easy-to-action insights, empowering rapid decision-making to help them increase safety, improve sustainability and optimize performance in near real-time.

And as the shipping industry sails into an ever more complex regulatory environment, the Advantage platform can help to support regulatory reporting and compliance. Our offering includes all the tools owners need to navigate the Carbon Intensity Indicator (CII), Poseidon Principles, EU ETS and FuelEU Maritime, including pooling of compliance balances.

Advantage features all-new architecture with enhanced data collection capabilities to provide a trusted source of all aspects of vessel and fleet performance and emissions compliance requirements in real-time.

The new system architecture provides enhanced connectivity across ABS Wavesight products, certain third-party applications and improved reliability and reduced cost of ownership with true SaaS infrastructure. Finally, it offers trusted security through ABS Wavesight’s SOC2 Type I and II, and ISO27001 certifications.

Digitalized operations are becoming a necessity for shipping companies that want to do more than just survive in today’s complex, volatile markets.

With regulatory compliance evolving away from prescriptive rules and towards accounting and verification, the ability to keep track of positions relative to baselines will become a full-time job.

With more and more systems and applications providing a welter of data that can be used to understand condition and safety, vessel managers need a better way to navigate and remain in control across a range of functions.

And with operational pressure increasing in response to new drivers – such as shifting global trade, increased political risk and geographic dislocation – shipping companies need a global overview of their fleet operations at their fingertips.

In this ever-changing landscape, the industry can’t make progress by doing more of the same and hoping for a different result. What it needs is an advantage.