Improving crew travel services for an international oil shipping company

Background

Our customer is one of the largest oil tanker shipping companies in the world, operating a fleet of over 100 VLCC, Suezmax, and Suezmax OBO carriers. Like any other marine fleet operator, their vessels trade globally and are manned with a multinational crew.

Challenge

Apart from the safe operation of each vessel, the customer was directly involved in the supply of the daily crew requirements. Crew travel is a critical service for any vessel operations, and this was a big concern for the customer, as well as being one of their biggest outgoing costs.

This was a straightforward process when the fleet was small, but over the years, their fleet size had increased, and getting involved in the finer details of cost-effective crew supply had become a major challenge.

Citing cost and reliability as major factors, the customer worked with different suppliers globally. As a result, they experienced a steep increase in inefficient 24-hour services, a lack of transparency and trust issues, non-availability of real-time travel spend data and unwanted paperwork.

Solution

After V.Travel was awarded the contract to manage all crew travel services in 2014, discussions with the main company stakeholders uncovered that they didn’t have the facilities to track their crew, which is an important aspect of any safe crew deployment.

The first step was to fully evaluate the complete booking process, where we uncovered and highlighted many unnecessary and inefficient procedures, costing extra time and money. Though V.Travel resolved many of the ongoing issues, we put forward the following proposals to address any outstanding concerns:

• A dedicated service team based in Mumbai, reducing the ‘cost of producing’ a transaction with immediate effect
• A dedicated team in a 24-hour service centre to ensure a seamless and efficient service after office hours
• V.Travel to develop the Travel Requisition System (TRS), integrated with the crew management system and used as the main booking platform

Results

Bringing all crew travel services under V.Travel resulted in the close monitoring of all travel spend, and ensured real-time information was available to the customer to meet vessel budget commitments. This not only minimised overspend, but also helped put together a robust crew tracking system.

The implementation of TRS meant unwanted paperwork was removed with many procedures now completed with just one click. TRS also ensured the most efficient and advanced booking process was followed for all crew travel management.

The customer now has complete trust in V.Travel to deliver the right level of ongoing commitment and service.