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The pandemic has played a key role in driving ports towards digital solutions, highlighting the importance of contactless operations that can reduce the risk of spreading COVID between employees and the crews of visiting ships. This is reflected by an increased demand for digital solutions across the globe, as more ports look to refresh and modernise their systems and operations. With congestions and delays at the forefront of the issues ports face, the interest in digitalisation has grown even stronger.
The past 18 months have demonstrated the importance of digital solutions to solve new and evolving challenges. Meanwhile, political changes, such as Brexit, have highlighted the need to adapt software systems to new demands, including the need to integrate platforms with third party data or to push and retrieve data from another source.
Software that can upgrade a port to ‘smart port’ status has many benefits, including increased efficiency, better oversight and reductions in fuel consumption and emissions. Port management systems that are rule-based, such as marineM, produce reliable results, which is critical to ensure consistency across a port or workboat company.
While large ports have the budget to build in-house systems and customised systems, small and mid-size ports are more likely to be looking for ‘off-the-shelf’ solutions that can solve the majority of their problems – and these solutions can be tailored to each port by the supplier.
With 80% of ports still missing out on digital solutions, port software can play a vital role in updating ports to face new and persistent challenges while improving their competitivity on the global stage.
Read the full article on page 13 of Heavy Lift and Project Forwarding International.
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