ShipServ and ISSA develop relationship
http://www.shipserv.com

The International Ship Supplier's Association (ISSA) is providing a free CD-ROM inside its 2002 catalogue of ship supplies (released on March 21). The CD-ROM catalogue, produced by e-procurement company ShipServ, includes software to integrate orders generated from the catalogue to the ShipServ TradeNet purchasing system.

ISSA claims to have received 2,000 advance orders for its catalogue, twice as many advance orders as it received from the last edition, mainly from shipping companies; the catalogue is priced at UKP £115, for both the hardcopy book and CD-ROM and has 35,000 items in it. The CD-ROM contains all the detail of the book (including pictures), but users can go directly from perusing items they wish to buy to putting a requisition list which they can send back to their shipping company or ShipServ purchasing network, without retyping data. 

ShipServ has also deepened its integration with the ShipNet shipping company software system, which is used by around 300 shipping companies. It has improved the speed of the integration and the amount of functionality. 

The integration between ISSA, ShipServ and ShipNet creates probably the most integrated purchasing network yet seen. Seafarers onboard vessels can choose orders from the ISSA catalogue, supplied on CD-ROM; this integrates directly with the ShipServ ShipLink software running onboard the vessel and supplied on the CD-ROM, which prepares a requisition, which can be sent to the shipping company via its ShipNet software. 

The ShipNet software creates requests for quotes which can be sent out to suppliers over the ShipServ TradeNet system, which has contacts with 160 ship suppliers and has sent orders to 350 suppliers to date. 

Graig Ship Management has already welcomed the move. "We extensively utilise ShipNet's SNAPS and ShipServ TradeNet and encourage our vessels to use the ISSA cataloue," says Stephen Donovan, purchasing manager of Graig Ship Management. "Our managed fleet has recently doubled and the purchasing department expects to be able to handle - without significant increase in staff- these new ships through efficiency gains brought about by the integration of these products." 

ShipServ already integrates with Xantic (previously SpecTec) software; Dutch shipowner Vroon recently announced it was using both Xantic and ShipServ. An integration with BASS software is expected shortly. ShipServ also produces its own "lite" software for a shipping company to manage supplies, which is considered appropriate for a shipowner with under 5 vessels. 

ShipServ's strategy continues to be to form as many collaborations with other companies as possible and facilitate existing business processes rather than change business processes; it comments that of the 25 shipping companies putting all of their purchasing through ShipServ, very few of them have changed the suppliers they work with as a result of using the system, they just communicate with them in a different way.