nir-vana innovation network

The SME: Established in 2012 by a team of software engineers with experience in building commercial and maritime software for multinational enterprises, aims to provide fully managed maritime solutions that relieve clients from administrative processes and allow them to focus on their core business. The team consists of maritime IT professionals and the state-of-the-art technology guarantees operational excellence by enabling efficiency improvements, enhancing collaboration and unlocking competitive advantages.

The technology: Personnel working on vessels and offshore projects has a variety of certificates, budget and procurement requirements. Planning, budgeting and communication is difficult to match and often resource intensive and chaotic. Current solutions insufficiently cover the whole process and they are characterized by lack of user-friendliness, flexibility and integration with other maritime tools and systems. The solution offered is a client-centric cloud software for the management companies, ship owners and crewing agencies which helps business digitalize their workflow, cut costs and improve budgeting and productivity. The software solution creates a paper and e-mail free workflow that can make the maritime and inland water services to the clients easy, efficient, precise and cost predictable via a platform where employees, crew and business partners can connect, share information and data and collaborate. The time efficiency, the access to real-time information and the capabilities analysis enable users to have a proactive market approach and lead in a challenging and rapidly changing market environment.
The company developed a solution that can distributed globally to clients, including their foreign offices, partners, vessels and crew members. The developed Cloud solution is a smart, fast and user-friendly platform for planning, administrating and tracking the assets, processes and human resources. The solution includes the below tightly integrated solutions which are also connected to external tools and systems when required: (1) Crewing, (2) Payroll, (3) Crew Portal, (4) Purchasing, (5) Transhipment.

The innovative software was created with the vision to connect management companies, ship owners and crewing agencies on the same platform by providing a single canvas where they can all work together as efficiently as possible.

The partnership: The SME is interested in financial agreements for further product development, licence agreements of commercial agreements with technical assistance for product commercialization.

Advantages & innovations

Using the software the company’s clients managed to reduce crew payroll by 5% and crew changes cost by 10%, have clear crew planning control and analysis, competent personnel with valid certificates and high employee retention rates. Compared to the competition, the software is has certain advantages: it is a web-based cloud platform and onboard solution which provides the ability to connect the users around the world, it functions in an intuitive and interactive way with one single click and it provides to the user data analytics and visualised information which is easily understandable and user friendly providing optimisation. In addition, the advance shift management and time recording modules enables Clients to setup the shift and time-recording rules based on the strict national and international regulations. The solution assists Clients to keep track of working hours, meet budgetary requirements and comply with regulations. The intuitive and transparent overview includes the layers of Shift planning, Crew actual time recordings and Approved time recordings which allows the user to distinguish differences between planning and actual hours via visualizations and reporting. The shift management and time recording module was presented to the European Commission committee of “Inland Waterway Transport” and was referred as a state-of-art solution that enables EU labour law compliance and facilitates new quality standards in European inland waterways. More specifically, through the software the Clients can: (a) optimise the workflows between the software owner and its clients, (b) keep up with new regulations, (c) meet and exceed the clients' demands with 24/7 online access and add value to the existing services, and (d) enable new business models based on transparency and collaboration. In addition, the SME can assist companies managing commercial, offshore, cruise, yacht, and all types of vessels to apply digital transformation to their operation.

Stage of development

Already on the market

Partner sought

The SME is seeking for investors for further enhancements and development of the solution in order to become the market leader in maritime and inland waters software. The SME is seeking for licensees who should be able to commercially exploit and distribute the SaaS (Software as a Service) solution to new Clients (end users coming from licensee efforts). The licensee shall be able to support the SME by providing the required input for technological services in relation to new Clients requirements. The licensee shall be responsible for all support needs resulting from the sales of the SaaS solution to its new Clients. The end users of the software and Clients of the SME can be all type of ship management companies or companies related to crewing activities, in maritime industry and inland waters, including: (a) Owner – operator companies that also serve external ship owners, (b) Owners that manage their own vessels, and (c) Third party ship management companies which provide ship management services to ship owners. The SME is looking for agreements in relation to the use of the existing software (via SaaS model) paired with the provision of a number of services in support of, or essential to, to the use of the software. The number of services include the data migration (data transfer process from other systems), the integration with other tools and systems (banking systems, travel agents etc) and customized developments based on the Client needs and requirements. In addition, the SME can assist companies managing commercial, offshore, cruise, yacht, ferry, fishing and all types of specialty vessels to apply digital transformation on their ship management operations. SME team is consisted of maritime IT professionals and the state-of-the-art technology guarantee operational excellence by enabling efficiency improvements, enhancing collaboration and unlocking competitive advantages.