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Making the numbers count

03 Jan 2011

Calculating a return on investment is not always easy when dealing with IT, especially on a terminal operating system.

However, fundamentally the same principles apply for ROI calculations on IT as any other type of equipment. A TOS, for example, helps both to reduce costs and increase revenue.

“In such cases, it also helps to ask what would happen if a container terminal didn't have a TOS," says ABP's Eddy Hooper. "The answer would be that it would be inefficient and costly to operate, so would lose business. Compare this to an access control system, where the justification for investment would be much harder to make.”

Waterstons' Sally Waterston points out that, ten years ago, port IT systems effectively became obsolete after four or five years; these days this does not happen. Systems evolve and are more agile and flexible allowing organisations to get the maximum return on their investment. The most successful projects will use as much of the existing hardware and software as possible.

“Because these days applications are expected to last a lot longer than they were ten years ago, they must be flexible and agile in order to model changing requirements,” she says. “Pragmatism is the order of the day and no change should be made or application implemented that does not pay for itself.”

Making the numbers count

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