Navis sets out software aspirations

The software specialist is also keen to address inefficiencies in the supply chain and will “build or buy software” meet this challenge, according to Mr de la Tour.

“We want to grow and get bigger,” he said, adding that parent company Cargotec has been clear in its aspiration to grow the software and services component of the group to account for 40% of revenue by 2020.

With an enterprise resource planning background, Mr de la Tour said that ports were 20 years behind in their data-related development, offering significant potential for growth in software and services. “My view of the industry is that it is very much fragmented between all the players; a lot of processes rely on manual processes,” he said.

“I’m also seeing a lack of standardisation. There’s no culture of bringing people around the table. The industry lags behind in leveraging technology to become more efficient. We aspire to remove silos and increase collaboration,” he said.

Navis is addressing collaboration through its cloud-based collaboration platform for ocean carriers and terminal operators, XVELA, which is expected to move on from the prototype stage next year. “We’d like to use that platform to increase collaboration through all stakeholders,” said Mr de la Tour.

XVELA chief technical officer, Robert Inchausti added that the pilots undertaken so far had generated “tangible value”, centred around forward visibility on prior ports of call.

“As a terminal operator you can see the discharge containers that will go through your terminal from the load at the previous terminal, so you can start planning your handling earlier,” he said.

Initial results of the pilots are expected to be released by the third quarter of this year.