V.Group Showcases New Operating Model and ShipSure 2.0 at LISW19

Last week, London International Shipping Week brought the global maritime industry to London. It’s great to see the event grow, and to see just how much innovation and expertise the UK capital has to offer. It also gave us an ideal opportunity to catch up with our customers, and share some of the latest developments at V.Group.

Our CEO, Graham Westgarth, and Franck Kayser, Group Managing Director, Ship Management, started proceedings by introducing our new operating model, and how it gives our fleet cells greater resources, and owners greater levels of service and transparency.

In our new operating model, our fleet cells are the priority, as they are the main point of contact with our customers and their vessels; they are where owners will see the benefit of the $30m that has been invested in V.Group in recent years. Centres of expertise around the globe support our fleet cells with market-leading expertise in HSEQ, compliance, and technical management, ensuring that they can offer the highest standards of service.

At the same time, our ShipSure platform brings together data throughout every facet of our operation to ensure that service is consistent between regions, and offices around the world.

The cumulative effect of this, Graham explained, is a dramatic shift in the model of ship management. Traditionally, the ship management business model has been highly transactional, and often solely reliant on giving owners access to better economies of scale. However, better benchmarking of performance through ShipSure, and higher levels of transparency means that V.Group can deliver a flawless local service with a global platform ensuring consistency. Furthermore, ShipSure 2.0 allows us to both collect richer data and ensure data accuracy on a larger scale, and to enhance the value that we can add to owners.

Stephen MacFarlane, Director of ShipSure, was on hand to demonstrate how ShipSure 2.0, which has just completed its rollout to V.Group’s whole fleet, facilitates this shift.

ShipSure 2.0 was entirely developed by V.Group, bringing in external expertise for the UX and usability. It is designed specifically to capture and support all ship management activities. It allows owners to track budgets and opex in real time, and crew do not have to spend time translating data from one system to another. All the systems within ShipSure 2.0 are designed to be easily interoperable and addressable – meaning that they can be easily integrated into an owner’s own systems if necessary.

ShipSure 2.0 also includes dedicated modules for crewing and hotel management. This means, for example, that crew on board a cruise ship could instantly identify faults in individual rooms (e.g. a broken TV) and create a request for repairs with a couple of clicks.

The crewing module facilitates video interviews, mobile document uploads, and seamless planning for crew – to the extent that they can expect to see their next assignment while still on board an ongoing one. This makes their lives more predictable, and saves time while changing jobs – eliminating paper-based processes which can potentially take up days of time.

As ShipSure 2.0 handles so much data, it provides a goldmine of insights that we can use for the benefit of our customers. What is particularly exciting is the way that it allows us, via the number of vessels we operate, to benchmark for different types of equipment. For instance, if multiple vessels use the same type of equipment, we can track to see whether it over- or underperforms on an individual basis, and set more accurate benchmarks for maintenance.

To find out more about ShipSure 2.0 and what it can do for you, contact info@shipsure.com