Helm Operations & ShipTracks Launch Competitor Job Tracking Capability

[By: Helm Operations]

Focused on maximizing insights into marine operations, Helm Operations and ShipTracks are pleased to announce the launch of Competitor Jobs Automation which is now available to all Helm CONNECT Jobs customers. 

Last year, ShipTracks and Helm launched a set of integrated features for harbor docking companies, designed to ensure that companies “never miss another job” in their ports. 

Now Helm CONNECT users can gain even more insight with the launch of ShipTracks Competitor Jobs Automation, a solution for tracking all harbor docking jobs and automatic data entry into the Helm CONNECT platform as orders, so that dispatchers don’t have to track and manually enter competitor orders. The solution ensures clean and accurate competitor analysis data can be made available across commercial organizations.   

“ShipTracks’ AIS integration with Helm CONNECT provides customers with the ability to see the geographic location of all inbound vessels they have orders for. When the new Competitor Jobs Automation capability is enabled, not only do customers see their own orders, but also competitors’ orders, automatically and accurately – and this changes everything. This level of market intelligence has never been seen before, and never has it been so easily accessible,” explains Charles Riley, CEO at ShipTracks. 

The Competitor Jobs Automation feature reduces operational costs for customers, increases their bottom line, and gives an accurate, central location to monitor their own and competitors’ jobs, said Riley, giving them the edge on market intelligence. The ShipTracks integration with Helm CONNECT allows users to simply drag and drop a vessel to create an order, instead of entering an order manually. ShipTracks Competitor Jobs Automation capability also allows users simply to select a set of competitors to track (Picture 1), with the jobs they generate automatically populating the list within the Helm CONNECT environment. 

While using Helm CONNECT Jobs, users see all orders, and with Competitor Jobs Automation feature, users can select competitive orders. In near real-time users can see the following competitive order information:

• List of competitor jobs, with vessel names
• Vessel to and from locations, and
• Tugs that assisted each vessel

Competitor jobs data also automatically feeds the available Helm CONNECT Competitor Analysis Dashboard allowing users to view their volume of work in comparison to competitors by date, customer, port and trip type. This optional Helm dashboard provides an information-rich presentation of key operational metrics, including estimates of competitor revenue, a comparison against their own actuals, and the number of potential jobs available in a given region or port (Picture 2).

“This new Competitor Jobs Automation adds even more value to the integration between ShipTracks and Helm CONNECT, freeing up staff from manual data entry, while providing operators with a tool that can increase productivity and profitability. This is a powerful automation that delivers strategically vital information about competitiveness,” said Riley.

“Partnering with leading maritime companies including safety and compliance consultants, maintenance specialists, training organizations, and maritime technology leaders helps Helm to provide our users with integrated tools to improve their operations, safety, and profitability. Our integration partners make life easier for your shore staff and crew. We thank Charles Riley and the team at ShipTracks, for all the advancements with dispatch optimization and the service to our shared customers,” says Paul Cyr, Partner Manager at Helm Operations and a 20-year veteran of the industry.