MTS: The next generation Marine Transaction Services 

As one of the world’s leading cruise companies, the Royal Caribbean International (RCI) contract represents an important step for MTS. "The cruise industry requires up to ten times more transactions than a tanker or containership," says Lars Erik Kristiansen, MTS’ project manager for the ongoing implementation. "To manage his volume, RCI sought a true B2B solution, one that could support their interface and cross-company processes with suppliers."

In addition, MTS will assist RCI in improving the quality of their transaction data, and create a framework for impact on Key Performance Indicators (KPIs). The systems will be operational in June, 2005.

John Inge Røtting, MTS’ Sales Director says that the RCI contract follows a period of increased activity for MTS. The company has reached agreements with the Dutch shipping group Wagenborg and Wallem, the Hong Kong-based ship management company. In addition, MTS has increased the number of integrations by adding more of the industry leading providers of management software, including BASS(www.bassnet.no) and Logimatic (www.logimatic.dk). ShipCentric (www.shipcentric.com) a company delivering a tailor-made solutions for ship-suppliers - has also integrated their system to MTS.

Next generation services
To remain competitive in today’s highly competitive 24/7 business cycle, maritime businesses are increasingly relying on innovative technical solutions which enable improved transaction management. Such services help reduce costs, enable more efficient administration and help businesses make better decisions.

To meet this demand, various companies have developed services to streamline the management of transactions between ship-owners and maritime suppliers. While an improvement over previous systems, such services simply moved transaction costs from one party to another in the value chain. Indeed, until recently, few of these services were capable of providing a true e-commerce solution.

Founded in 2000, Marine Transaction Service (MTS) represents the next-generation of e-commerce transaction services. By moving transaction costs out of the value chain altogether, both ship-owners and suppliers can operate more efficiently. At present, MTS has provided electronic transmission services for procurement transactions for over 700 vessels and is the first company of its kind to successfully implement electronic invoicing.

By the industry, for the industry
According to Brynjar Gevelt , CEO for MTS, the company has been built up by the marine industry, for the marine industry. "To ensure corporate and product developments that are in the best interest of the industry, MTS works with a few well known marine suppliers as funding partners to create the ideal combination of industry expertise," he says. MTS partners include Alfa Laval, CapGemini, Hellmann Worldwide Logistics, Jotun and Unitor.

This approach, combined with the company’s leading technical expertise has created a unique transaction service "Unlike many of our competitors, MTS is a truly streamlined business-to-business solution," says Gevelt. "And our service is supported by a comprehensive range of specialty products, which add significant value." These include AccessAdaptors, designed to enable seamless integration and to ensure that the customer can access comprehensive features such as StretchOut and PriceLookup, tools to automate searches for supplier prices.

Increased activity
In addition to RCI, MTS has worked with a broad range of maritime companies. Wallem, a leading global ship management company with over 5,600 staff working around the world, pioneered an in house e-procurement system (www.realmarine.net) as early as 1999. While effective, they sought an agreement with MTS to raise the efficiency and quality of their system. "Wallem has succeeded in part thanks to their embrace of new technologies, and they recognized that MTS represents the next generation in transaction services." says Gevelt.
MTS is also working with Wagenborg (www.wagenborg.com), a diversified shipping group based in The Netherlands, on a six month exploration project which will commence in July 1. Their objective is to improve internal processes and improve efficiency on the interaction with their suppliers. "We are confident that we can deliver a system that will enable Wagenborg to significantly decrease transaction costs on their fleet of 140 vessels."

Integrating with suppliers
MTS has also significantly increased the number of supplier integrations, which will enable he company to attract new customers. Recently, MTS completed the integration process with BASS’ Fleet Management Systems and Logimatic’s ePOS Purchase system, two leading fleet management software providers. "In both cases, these were win-win agreements," says Røtting. "BASS and Logimatic will be able to provide their customers with value- added services our next generation technology enables, while MTS will be able to attract new business from companies which use their procurement software."

MTS has also integrated with ShipCentric, a unique business solution for maritime suppliers based on Navision, a software solution developed by Microsoft Business Solutions. "In order to enable a true B2B solution between ShipCentric’s supplier-clients and ship owners and ship managers, ShipCentric sought to integrate their system with MTS," says Røtting. "This service is built on the mXML code, which is specific to the maritime industry and support more advanced 2nd generation services than MTML."

While MTS is only 5 years old, Gevelt is confident that the company will continue to show strong growth. "We believe that there will be increased demand for our next-generation transaction services, and we remain committed to providing our customers tomorrow’s technologies, today."