The introduction of sensors, mobile computing and other automation technologies are causing an exponential rise in the amount of data being generated. Traditional models are becoming unsustainable, limiting an organization’s abilities to innovate, while also incurring huge capital and operational costs. Most organizations operating in the industrial domain use enterprise-scale applications accessed via on-premise infrastructure systems and services. Due to the mission critical nature of these applications, CIOs in ports and terminals are often provisioning high volumes of computation and storage capacity in advance which many times go underutilized. Moreover, applications are fragmented meaning they either work independently in isolation in silos or at best have semi-automated routines for integration, causing significant ICT bottlenecks, productivity leakages, and cost inefficiencies. Various reports and surveys indicate that ports and terminals have started to recognize the benefits of digitalization and the necessity in adopting more flexible, collaborative, and service-oriented data management technologies. The digitalization journey can be challenging, resource-intensive and above all disruptive.
The maritime industry depends on lots of systems, but Terminal Operating System (TOS) is the source for 80% of the transactional data that is being generated in the terminal. However, the TOS works in isolation to record transactions such as ship/truck/train arrivals, container and other cargo moves, dwell time, auxiliary services, EDI with trading partners, reporting, etc. In addition, terminals also implement peripheral applications such as labor utilization and productivity, HR and payroll, staff rostering systems, reefer monitoring systems, depot maintenance and repair applications, billing and financial AR and AP systems, customer portals, machinery and equipment maintenance systems, HSSEQ policies and procedures systems, hours of time recording, in-house developed software and routines, etc.
Sophisticated terminals go a step further, depending on their size and budget, and may also implement process automation technologies to further automate the operations such as RTLS (real time location systems), PLCs, SCADA, OCRs, RFID, Bar code scanners, weighing systems, facility and building management systems, etc. creating fast real-time log data. Terminal operators such as DPW, APMT and TIL operate multiple terminals in different geographical regions and time zones around the globe which further adds to the size, variety, velocity and veracity of data being generated. In many cases all these systems are purchased and implemented in different time frames with limited thought given to integration which grows in complexity, cost and risks as time goes by. Often, a lot of focus is given to leveraging just the data generated from operations and not analyzed and utilized contextually with other data sources. There is a huge opportunity lost in doing so!
Many terminal operators have started recognizing that aggregating and analyzing the data that is being generated by all these systems can help improve making decisions, enhance productivity and efficiency. Hence, terminal operators need to have strategies in place to adopt modern cloud-based, secure, scalable and high availability platform that will allow them to centralize and automate data collection, transformation, and enrichment.
Youredi is a leading provider of the most advanced, mature and secure platform that can fully address the data needs of ports and terminals. Our iPaaS solution acts as a value adding broker between different endpoints and can be a one-stop shop to process and enrich data that is being generated from any system, transmitted with any protocol and containing any format. We work with our clients to automate data pipelines, ensuring that the quality of data being generated is per set standards, checking for duplications, errors and raise notification for non-compliance or arrival of new data. Our iPaaS can also be utilized to enrich data generated form one source by other sources. For instance, data that is being generated from the TOS and interchanged with terminal’s trading partners such as consignees, freight forwarders and carriers, can be blended with ship AIS application and/or weather services application providing the critical context to better decision making.
Many terminals’ IT department have Enterprise Data Warehouse (EDW) in place and they often purchase visualization tools such as Power BI, Tableau, etc. to help management reporting, KPI and performance monitoring, etc. However, many times these applications are not utilized, or they are underutilized due to lack of the necessary expertise, discipline and tools to design, develop, automate and maintain the data flows to these applications. Also, one should also carefully consider the resources required to provision, configure and scale (up and down) the infrastructure that is required to run such platforms.
Of course, such expertise and platforms can be cultivated in-house, but this takes time, effort, money, risks and comes at an opportunity cost. Hence, Youredi is a natural fit in such cases as our iPaaS is already operating in various usage scenarios around the world. Our teams work closely with our customers’ IT teams to identify their data integration needs and deploy the solutions in the cloud. Once in production, our fully managed integration services will look after the client integrations so that they do not have to worry about it.
Some of the benefits that can be achieved from Youredi iPaaS include:
- Centralization, management and monitoring of all data sources
- Provision of resources on a needs basis
- Minimized time to analytics
- Automation of data collection and normalization tasks
- Organizational visibility, transparency and collaboration
- Proactive decision making
If you want to learn more about Youredi and the solutions we provide for the Maritime Logistics industry, you can always schedule an online meeting with our integration experts. They will gladly walk you through our technology and answer all your questions.
