RightShip sets sail with big data

Melbourne-based third party ship vetting agency RightShip is redeveloping its online ship vetting information system (SVIS) with business analytics software from IBM.

Using predictive analytics and reporting, SVIS 2.0 is designed to give RightShip customers access to information such as ship ownership details and inspection records. It will also allow customers to perform accurate risk forecasting on nominated vessels. The system can be accessed through the company’s website and contains data about 71,000 ships and thousands of maritime companies.

RightShip CEO Warwick Norman told CIO Australia that SVIS 2.0 will be launched in the first quarter of 2014. The revamped online system will be optimised for smartphones and tablets.

“It’s a lengthy build process from now. Because SVIS is an industry standard, we can’t change the standard without consultation and change management processes,” he said.

“We are a business-to-business tool and what we have seen from some of our usage analytics is greater use of mobile. We have to answer that call and make sure we’re allowing that [mobile optimisation] facility in the future.”

According to Norman, 2600 users in over 210 organisations around the world use SVIS.

After looking at a number of vendors, the company decided to implement IBM’s Cognos business intelligence (BI) and SPSS predictive analytics.

“The system will allow RightShip to better target substandard performance and forecast risk dynamically in response to changing factors,” he said.

SVIS system manager Bryan Guenther added that a design firm called Reactive has been hired to redesign the website for mobile devices.

“We’re moving to a HTML 5 front end so we have to re-factor the code to support the new user interface.”

Follow Hamish Barwick on Twitter: @HamishBarwick

Follow CIO Australia on Twitter and Like us on Facebook… Twitter: @CIO_Australia, Facebook: CIO Australia, or take part in the CIO conversation on LinkedIn: CIO Australia