Single Or Multiple IT Providers For Container Terminals?

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Afzal Khalfay, VP of IT in DP World Corporate Head Office, says: Whilst we indeed have our own TOS, we assist our terminals in taking their own TOS decisions based on the competitive environment their success depends on, and the specific qualities of TOS(s) available to them in the market. We have chosen to make add-on modules to our TOS competitive compared to alternatives, by working closely with third party solution providers who can complement our TOS. This allows us to better manage our customer satisfaction and investments.

Some terminal operators express outspoken interest in ensuring that the market for commercial software is competitive, and that the commercial software vendors continuously develop and improve their software giving the operators a leading edge compared to competitors, who are funding proprietary software development internally. Such operators inspire runner-up software providers to breathe the leading solution provider down the neck, so a continuous development of better and better solutions is secured, in turn improving the operators’ competitiveness towards those, who have chosen not to depend on commercially available software.

The conclusion from exploring views and concerns for using one single rather than multiple IT providers: It depends; no one size fits all! There is a trend that the larger the terminal, the more justification for supplementary best-of-breed or even custom-build solutions exist, and with significant in-house IT organizations available internally in larger terminals, also the means to mitigate the risks, which comes with dealing with multiple IT partners is in place. And the smaller the terminal, the more desire to use in-a-box style solutions and maybe even reverse engineer the actual business processes, to secure strong alignment between process and IT platform.

What is to come? Whilst container terminals have already manifested themselves as an industry, which requires industry specific software, there is a trend to expect freedom-of-choice both when it comes to software as well as hardware and telco services — yard cranes with Sony Playstation controllers are already available; when will we see consumer-style tablet computers as handhelds on the yard?

And finally the HR perspective: If a terminal decides to limit its choices for its key people, the creativity of the most creative people will be constrained to the TOS super-user role, i.e. how much benefit can you squeeze out of the current TOS, which might not necessarily be equally rewarding as pursuing how much value and benefits can you produce for the terminal with less constraints.

(Rene Bendt is the director of ARL Consulting, a Rotterdam-headquartered IT developer leveraging its insight in the shipping & transport industry with its IT delivery capability in the Siberian Silicon Valley. From its Siberian IT centre, medium-size and large, scalable IT solutions are delivered to clients, supporting vessel, capacity and container fleet management, operational excellence and optimization, documentation and process support, and customer & relationship management.)