Small scale solutions
Many small- and medium-sized ports are still using "home-made" terminal management systems and often there is resistance to adopting new technology, claims John Holm Jensen, consultant for Denmark's WM-data.
"We find an awful lot of IT patchwork in small- and medium-sized ports - a couple of out-of-the-box products, some home-made systems, a few Excel spreadsheets and a financial system - and none of it is really integrated," he says.
WM-data says its FlexPort and FlexShip systems are ideally suited to smaller- and medium-sized ports: "This is a total port management system. If you have three cranes, general cargo, a pile of coal on one quay and pulp on another, this is a solution that can handle it," says Bruce Ramsay of Touchstone, WM-data's UK partner. "FlexPort and FlexShip were developed to put port and shipping functionality into a premium ERP solution."The system was first developed for a specific client in the 1990s and only since 2004 has WM-data been pushing it internationally, with installations around the world as a result.
"There is always resistance to change in shipping, which is an ultra-conservative industry," says Mr Jensen. "That can be understandable - shipping has always been specialised and it is hard to find out-of-the-box systems that can be configured to cover a special niche and a lot of players in the market have a hard time understanding the industry's actual needs, especially in the smaller ports."
