Star on European Technology Fast 500
Http://www.sismarine.com

Norwegian maritime software company Star Information Systems has been named on the 2003 Deloitte European Technology Fast 500, a ranking of the 500 fastest-growing technology companies in Europe. 

The company, which is 30 per cent owned by Barber Shipmanagement is growing by 10 per cent a month and making profits of 10 per cent.

To determine the fastest growing companies, Deloitte reviewed companies' revenues for the past five years (1998-2002), calculated the five-year revenue growth percentage, and compared the growth of all the technology companies.

"We are a little bit proud of that," says Star marketing director Jan Kalland. 
"We had developed our software without any support. Everything has increased step by step."

"We have not invested 50 hundred million into the solutions so we don't need to have too much income off it," he says. 

Star's customers include Farstad Shipping, Odfjell, Norgas Carriers, Wallenius/Wilhelmsen Lines, 

Most of Star's customers are using integrated software modules for purchasing, procurement and ISPS. An additional revenue stream is through the electronic business transactions they make. 

"Some customers are using our software to manage purchases and request for quotes for 60 per cent of all their purchases," he says.

In one week in January, Star reported 2,600 transactions through the system - an all time high - categorising a "transaction" as a request for quote, bid, or purchase order.

The biggest e-procurement challenge Star is facing, he says, is persuading the vendors to come onboard. Although 450 suppliers are online with Star, this is not really enough.

"All over the world we have not been able to convince all the suppliers to join in this development," he says. 

Many ship suppliers around the world already have their own computer systems - it is tough to persuade them to integrate them into Star, or to access the Star system over a web interface separately. 

Mr Kalland says that Star has managed to create integrations between its own system and the other online ship supply management systems, SeaSupplier, ShipServ and Martransserv (e4marine).

However he notes that MTML, the standard which was supposed to make it easy fo different purchasing systems to talk to each other, does not seem to be working as well as hoped.

"I don't think this standard is growing," he says. "Its not accepted by the vendors. All the vendors have different systems."

The only one ship supplier is fully e-commerce enabled, he says, is Unitor, which developed its own e-business system, e4marine. "That is the only place where we have a seamless integration between the ship all the way into the vendor," he says. 
 
"Before, they had a physical document," he says. "They are not quite sure with electronic documents. Some of them are not used to have that. They like to do it in the old way."

The more electronically integrated everybody is, the less manual work which needs to be done - shipboard maintenance systems can be automatically updated, shipping company procurement systems automatically have the right data. 

There is often a frustration among ship suppliers about the number of different internet portals they have to use to receive orders, logging onto each of them separately to see if they have any business - it can be much more efficient to integrate them all into their own software. 

Star does charge a transaction-based fee, but says this is not the main source of the company's revenue. 

One problem Star is finding is the system being misused, with bogus e-mails being sent to vendors to try to work out what prices they are charging.

"If one of our customers has a new vendor - this will pop up in our system," he says. "Other people are leaking this. The vendors are receiving an e-mail. Normally we call to the vendors and tell them not to have anything with these transactions to do at all.