Expertise is the primary commodity we provide to our customers.
Products and services change – they have natural life cycles, and both suppliers and customers must plan for this. Autoship Systems Corporation looks for emerging requirements within the Maritime Transport industry, and then matches our development work to meet them. When a product can no longer be developed to meet the changing needs of the market, we launch something new that will.
Sounds simple; but regardless of the product, to be successful we and our partners need to maintain consistent expertise in three areas: Maritime Transport System Design, System Implementation, System Integration.
Maritime Transport System Design
Knowledge and expertise in this category are constantly changing – we need to keep up with changes in the industry, at the shipping line and terminal level, as well as with changes in development and hardware technology that impact the systems we design. Without knowledge of the maritime shipping industry, our ability as software developers and consultants would be less meaningful; and without expertise in software development, our ability to adequately address your needs would be suspect.
System Implementation
Successful implementation starts with a good design process, and ASC’s expertise at this is unsurpassed.
The ability to design software that performs a certain set of functions is only one component of a successful solution; to be truly successful, designers must pay attention to how it will perform, how easy it will be to use, and to the usability of the data it will provide. To do this, we and our partners must make sure that our own industry experts, interface design experts, and customer relations personnel are fully involved in the design process.
The software development process is cooperative and iterative, and in order to successfully implement a design the customer must enter into this process at several key stages.
The first stage of customer involvement is in the production of a technical specification – which is a cooperative process of development towards a final signed document. After the specification is settled, ASC produces a series of increasingly complete “betas”. The customer reviews each beta and provides feedback on how the functionality and interface meet the specifications. The result is not only that you receive a well-designed, tested and proven final product, but also that you now have people in your own company who are trained and ready to implement the system throughout your organization.
System Integration
Modern shipping profits rest on these two words. Without quality data integration, fast ships and quick stevedores can’t help you.
At Autoship Systems Corporation, we are in the business of designing software that efficiently coordinates cargo planning between terminal, ship, shipping line, and terminal agencies. Our success depends on how easy we make it for you to transfer data between our planning software and your existing data structures – and we’ve been very successful.
We offer the best possible scenario for a customer: by taking advantage of both standard EDI methods and proprietary methods, our applications give you greater data integration capabilities yet operate on a standalone basis. None of your existing systems or data base structures need change to accommodate our applications. The result is that you get seamless, low-impact data integration and planning capabilities.
But seamless data integration does not by itself translate into success – the interface must also be easily used by real people in real operations. If a new tool is to be truly successful, then using it must quickly become second nature and must never be seen as an obstacle. This means that the tool must be designed to fit perfectly within the operating environment and conditions. At ASC, we’ve accumulated industry-specific experience and expertise in designing the interface to meet your operational requirements.