Do we spend enough time thinking about the future? I’m not just talking about the next quarter or the next six months, but the really big picture, the kind of blue-sky thinking that lets your imagination take off the fetters and consider what might actually might be coming next. It might seem not just blue-sky but stark raving bonkers, given that the next 12-18 months represent make or break for many in the shipping industry, but such thinking is more important than ever.

There have been far too few examples of forward thinking. DNV’s Shipping 2020 publication is one of the few that provide a firm vision and its findings are predicated on shipping’s ability or otherwise to adapt to the changing regulatory landscape and grasp the competitive opportunities that they present, while also managing the risks.

I was pondering problem this while waiting to board a plane to Athens and the recent DigitalShip conference, which would spend two days considering IT developments in shipping. Where were the same pieces of research that look at which technologies will shape and disrupt the industry? How does the growth of next-generation high capacity satellite services sit alongside the piteously small number of seafarers with access to anything other than some voice and limited e-mail?

In a more practical sense, does communications have a role to play in the current crisis? Can the broadband era help ship owners do more than simply keep their crews and regulators happy? Even if we abandoned the futurology, was there enough clarity on what the IT department could do for the top and bottom lines?

The trip to Athens was time well spent. Not only was the affair free from the usual score-settling and name-calling between airtime providers, it had a practical programme reflecting the state of the maritime IT industry and looking at where it has to go in future.

As the event drew to a close it became increasingly obvious that the kind of forward thinking I was pondering is not just needed but is beginning to happen in IT departments across the shipping industry.

What we seem to have right now, to judge by the conference chairs as well as the speakers and panellists they introduced, is a lack of vision and a focus on the wrong things. In a time approaching crisis for the shipping industry, that needs to change.

First day chair Giampiero Soncini of SpecTec is a man not short of opinions and he had a few pearls to share. Rather cheekily observing that none of shipping companies that had gone bust of the last two years were SpecTec customers, he sounded a warning shot for maritime IT vendors and users alike.

Shipping, he said, was the only industry where the IT department believed it could build procurement systems in house. Not strictly true. I’ve heard tell of IT departments wasting millions on half-implemented/half home-grown SAP projects and even suggesting they could build a system for web and hard copy publishing until they were told they should stick to the knitting and leave the developing to professionals.

Don’t try and build anything yourself, Soncini said; you will achieve about one fourth of what you want and the costs will be astronomical. If you don’t already have a properly organised IT management system your chances of survival are slim. Oh, and make sure your IT supplier will be around in a few years to support you.

IT is a weapon that needs to be put in use but Soncini said there is still too much focus on obtaining savings rather than adding value. Ship managers and IT departments get so little face time with owners because they and their work are not seen as strategic to the businesses success – a huge mistake.

He also took a swipe at the tendency among IT managers to point out that they could do more of anything if only the bandwidth was cheaper. There is a need for “real broadband at a real fixed rate” he said but IT managers needed to stop focussing on airtime costs and start contributing to creating savings and adding value. Some 90% of time was spent complaining about airtime cost, 10% on gaining operational efficiencies.

Arguing the toss over USD 1,000 of airtime was “pathetic” when shipping companies are wasting thousands annually on inventory and spending millions on inefficient bunker fuel procurement, he said.

IT must do more, he suggested and there was plenty that could be done, when savings of 0.1-3% could make the difference between “operational life and death”.

That the IT department can do more is obvious but it was Deloitte’s Alexandros Charvalios in his presentation on security threats who reminded the tech guys that saying you don’t have the budget was the easy way out. Management, he said, might understand communications but not managing security – the users had to make them aware and allow them to take responsible.

AMMITEC’s Katarina Raptaki summed up the proceedings in characteristically blunt style. The evidence was clear from the need to provide solutions for an increasingly complex world. The IT department needed to get out of its bunker and forge links with the operations and chartering departments.

Visionaries were needed in the IT department to both save and make money – in fact the whole role of the IT department needed to redefined. Just as urgent was the need for the IT department to understand broader shipping world and to gain rapid experience in other business areas and become more integrated with other departments.

Easy to say and harder to do but here was a real rallying call – a mission the whole industry could get behind, in the Agora of cultured debate and reasoning.

Source: BIMCO