Tor Håkon Svanes, Product Manager, NavFleet, explains how the new NavFleet app can transform traditional fleet monitoring and management for ambitious owners and operators, putting them in complete control…at all times, from all locations.

“Sometimes you don’t know you need something until you experience it. Then, when you see what it can do, you realise you can’t live without it.”

Tor Håkon Svanes smiles, attempting to balance his naturally humble nature with an enthusiasm for what he sees as a breakthrough innovation: “We believe that when forward-thinking shipowners and operators try the NavFleet app they’re going to have one of those eureka moments. In short, it has the potential to turn reactive fleet management proactive, putting office based teams in complete control of their assets.”

He picks up his phone to emphasize the point, noting: “It, quite literally, puts your entire fleet in the palm of your hand.”

Building bridges

Svanes sees NAVTOR’s latest digital development as an example of smart shipping coming of age.

The newly launched app works as an extension of the established NavFleet fleet management and monitoring solution. This desktop platform utilises NAVTOR’s integrated digital ecosystem to gather and utilise vessel and third party data, empowering more efficient, safer, compliant, and profitable decision making.

The app effectively builds a bridge between the solution and key business stakeholders, wherever they are, to keep them informed of the things they need to know, when they need to know it.

Svanes says it has “transformational” potential.

Need to know

The functionality of the app is broad-based, delivering insights into weather conditions on routes, vessel positions, chart ordering and usage, and much more. But it’s the event notification details that Svanes sees as the real gamechanger.

These bespoke notifications are easily selected by relevant executives, from a fully comprehensive list, so they’re only informed of what they need to know. Then, if a vessel strays outside whatever parameters are applicable, they’re made aware of real-time deviations.

What’s more, users can then comment on the event and advise on corrective actions. For example, if an executive has just got off a plane, or come out of a meeting, and sees an important notification they can easily follow the event through comments and the details provided, or simply discover that ‘all is well’ and no action is needed from their side.

Svanes says, in this respect, it works both as a notification system and a secure chat room for efficient fleet management and problem solving.

Keen to show its potential, he showcases a couple of typical scenarios.

Empowering awareness

“Speed, for example,” he says. “If your charter party agreement, or company environmental policy, has a speed clause – or say a vessel is traveling through a restricted area for whales where there’s strict speed limits – and you ship is traveling at 12.5 knots when the agreed limit is 9 to 10, then you can, if you’ve chosen to, get a notification.”

This, he states, empowers seamless awareness, compared to a traditional alternative of “checking online from time to time for updates” or analysing data or reporting after the fact.

“In the past you’d have informed the captain that this is the speed limit, please stick to it, whereas now you know what’s happening when it’s happening,” he states. “This can make a huge difference in terms of cost and compliance.

“And of course,” he continues, “if you tag someone in you can then get more information. For example, instead of making a call to the captain and saying ‘what’s going on’ you can find out from a colleague that they’ve already investigated, and the speed had to be increased to avoid bad weather, which may be allowed in the charter party agreement. As such it creates awareness, empowers decision making and increases efficiency, with real-time corrections and less duplication of tasks.”

Staying one step ahead

Safety and predictability are also key benefits, he adds, noting that any number of the high profile groundings of recent years could have been avoided if key decision makers had been seamlessly informed, and empowered to act, in advance.

“Again,” Svanes explains, “imagine you have a vessel that is deviating from a corridor, repeatedly moving out of its cross track distance (XTD). Well, if you’re on the other side of the world, outside the office, the first thing you might know about it is when you get a message detailing a potentially dangerous, damaging and costly incident.”

He continues: “However, if you’ve got the NavFleet app in your pocket you’ll get a ‘ping’ when it moves out of the XTD, every time (if that’s what you specified), and you can take action with your team to ensure it gets back on track.

“I mean, any deviation from route, delays according to schedule, bad weather, speed, issues or even tsunami warnings… if you want a notification, you can get one.”

Competitive advantage

Despite his initial “don’t know what you want until you see it” comment, Svanes is at pains to point out that this isn’t just innovation for the sake of innovation – it’s meeting customer demand head-on.

He says the app has been moulded around “input from market-leading shipping companies” that look to the NAVTOR team’s unique experience (the company has solutions on over 18,000 vessels worldwide) to tackle recurring pain points.

“In that respect, I’d say that this is really co-developed with our customers,” he comments. “We’ve listened to their needs and put them at the centre of this innovation, as we do with everything we develop, coming up with a solution that perfectly complements our mission of ‘making life easier’ for shipping companies. This really is the epitome of that. What could be easier than an app that gives you control of your global fleet?”

Concluding, Svanes notes that the app, like the desktop NavFleet platform, will evolve in line with the changing needs of shipping companies, with a raft of updates already planned for later this year.

“We want the development to be as proactive as our customers are now able to be,” he smiles, “helping us, and them, stay ahead in the smart shipping world of today, and tomorrow.”