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Largest Support Services Provider in Global Shipping Domain improved its ROI by outsourcing its IT Software Services

V.SHIPS: Company Profile

VshipsWorld's largest provider of wide range of support services to global shipping industry. It manages more than 1000 vessels and 24000 crews are employed within its network of 70 offices worldwide. The company engages with owners and operators of cruise ships, ferries, and yachts, other passenger ships, ship yards as 'Ship Managers'.

Business Challenge

Business users were using a suite of software applications which was originally developed by an in-house team several years ago.

For a couple of years, many suggestions and requests to align the software to current needs of business were piling up. These were deferred due to high engagement of available resources. V.Ships identified it as one of the major issues needing immediate attention.

Roll out of new enhancements/updates in existing applications involved high engagement of its IT resources. Therefore, the company observed significant delays in regular activities of IT to support new offices, teams etc on several occasions. Each rollout of these changes required updating software on all working system i.e. systems which are multi-located in regional offices and vessels. Sometimes, ships located at remote locations used to touch shore once in 5 to 6 months to collaborate data with central servers. Overall, this was resulting in loss of time and resulting in high cost of managing these systems. Moreover, user training of new staff was also impacted.

According to the company's IT Management, actual return on its investment on IT services was significantly low as compared to the expected ROI.

Since, the company's core expertise is managing crew, budgets and other support services of vessels and not software development, it finally decided to outsource all of its software development related activities in year 2005

Solution

V.Ships outsourced its software development activities to Globrin after due diligence of its software development processes and management practices in January, 2006.

Globrin staff spent the initial few months with the IT Department of the company to understand the overall business systems and software systems used along with their Architecture and Databases getting used internally. The suite of applications included Crew Management, Purchasing Systems, Accounts System, Payroll System and Budgeting.

Several changes were suggested in IT practices by Globrin in the areas of software enhancements and roll out plans to business users. These included Iteration Planning based on Scrum methodology, Change Control Process, Versioning Control and adoption of more advanced and modern technologies.

Over the last three years, these systems have improved significantly in alignment with Business, Performance, Reliability and Scalability for future needs. The company has now more time to focus on its core activities. Offshore development through Globrin has also lowered total cost of operations, thus, improving returns on investment for the company.

Results

Key Benefits and Advantages:

Strategic Partnership of IT Support Services has given many advantages to the company, such as:

  • The company is able to focus on its core line of business.
  • There is no need to hire IT staff from time to time to cater to ad-hoc requirements.
  • Reduction in total cost of operations by means of outsourcing, maximizing ROI.
  • Standardized and Streamlined IT Processes.
  • Quick responses to Change Requests and issues from Business teams.
  • Strengthening of its leadership by leveraging from IT Support.
  • Well- Managed up-to-date systems help in long term business relationship with owners and operators of vessels and their dependency over the company.
  • Helping in rapid transition of new vessels or offices due to ease in implementation of its systems.
  • Ease in enhancements of Software Systems
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