i-SeaportsTM Management Overview

The challenges and opportunities for seaports today are extraordinary. Ports of all sizes and types can expect to undergo radical change that reflects both the revolutions in the way global commerce is being conducted, and the increasing demands for secure trade and a healthy environment. i-Seaports enables its users to face these challenges in multiple ways. Many advantages are offered through its ERP, Accounting, CRM, and Ecommerce end-to-end workflow. The command and control it provides for traffic, security and communications make i-Seaports Management an ideal choice for your complete seaport IT management solution.

Advantages Summary

Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP). i-Seaports follows the ERP principal of integrating business processes to gain efficiencies in time, money and personnel. i-Seaports follows this principal. What has also been needed is an ERP, Accounting, CRM and Ecommerce solution that removes other barriers to business — the language, currency, time zones and Universal Time Clock hassles. i-Seaports does the integration that removes the barriers for both operators and clients.

Full Service Accounting. i-Seaports Management realizes the primary business of ports is to serve the commercial needs of their city, state and national GNP. This requires the best and most streamlined solutions for managing the import and export activities of their clients. i-Seaports NetSuite® (www.NetSuite.com) 24/7 Software-as-a-Service on-demand and collaborative computing full accounting system rivals SAP® and Sage® products, to name some industry leaders, for the small and medium business enterprise.

Customer Relations Management (CRM). i-Seaports addresses the customer relations management challenge with power. It treats customers as partners, not just clients, and provides the 24/7 communications and access they need to succeed in their business. When a port customer, any customer in the world, wants to make a reservation to your port, they sign in and are presented with the customer dashboard and reservation form. They complete the reservation and click save. Their request is entered. Their user interface can be in their preferred language. Based on the services they have requested, i-Seaports can give them an estimate of their anticipated costs long before they arrive in the port.

Ecommerce. i-Seaports has built in Ecommerce capabilities for marketing campaigns, campaign management, and web-store where your clients can sign-in to download critical information like the tariff schedule or view the latest news on your port. It is focused on growing your customer base - use your web-store to market real-estate, leasing and other opportunities your port has to offer on a global scale. ECommerce lets you use the power of the internet in multiple ways.

i-Seaports End-to-End work flow conquers two challenges to seaport commercial, environmental and security IT management - removing redundancy of efforts by providing ease of collaboration and long-term ROI that capitalizes on a Software-as-a-Service, role-based and interoperable architecture for integrating and customizing the use of advanced IT solutions that are already affordable.

Virtual Fusion Command and Control Summary

i-Seaports Management is five centers in one Software-as-a-Service giving you unprecedented command and control of all of your port operations.

i-Seaports' Virtual Fusion Center Approach acknowledges that while there are many deterrents to manmade threats and mitigation of natural disasters, increasingly the emphasis is on a more aggressive and advanced knowledge and information sharing approach. Background checking and threat assessment processes for vessels, cargo and people are becoming a norm. The need for partnering between commerce and security has never been more obvious and efforts in that direction are already at work in the major seaports where jointly manned Command and Control Centers have Coast Guard and Seaport personnel working side-by-side to implement security processes while managing port operations.

i-Seaports has unique capabilities that promote partnering at all levels and represents a Virtual Fusion Center for Command and Control in seaports of all sizes.

1. Traffic Management Center: Manages all aspects of a vessel call from reservations to departure and every billable and other service delivered in the process
2. Communications Coordination Center: Coordinates notifications, updates and communications at every point of a vessel call, in times of emergency and for normal operations
3. Security Monitoring Center: Monitors access control, perimeter intrusion, web-cams, AIS , RADAR, SONAR and others and collaborates with security from inside the application.
4. Financial Control Center: Controls billing, collecting, accounting, purchasing, leasing and auditing as virtually real-time.
5. Ecommerce Marketing Center: Manages internet presence, web-store, customer relations, statistical analysis and development planning with the CRM, ERP reporting and graphical presentation tools.

Traffic Management

i-Seaports provides a Vessel Traffic Management System (VTMS) that fully integrates to its communications, security, financial services and customer relations. No longer must these each stand alone and require redundancies of effort to manage and synchronize data. i-Seaports workflow processing begins with reservation requests from any client, anywhere, anytime 24/7. The steps flow seamlessly from one to another yet have built-in controls in each step.

Dashboards managed by the Administrator insure that what users can see and do in each step of the process protects critical proprietary and confidential commercial and security information. Historical data for all communications, messages, transaction decisions, activities and services are fully documented in i-Seaports and provide for an extensive array of standard and customizable (ad-hoc) reports, charts, graphs and analysis that let both the client and the seaport stay on top of their business.

Integrated hyper-links and web-services flesh-out the Traffic Management ease of use. Optional utilization of Lloyd's Register-Fairplay Sea-Web® web-service puts you online with their database of record for international ships and their joint venture product, AISLive® provides 24/7 location of ships entering and leaving your ports and last known locations in ports around the world.

Security Monitoring

Security monitoring and collaboration are challenges that loom large in Seaports today. Local, state and federal law enforcement are challenged at every turn with issues related to criminal, terrorist, natural disaster, weather, environmental and accidental hazards. i-Seaports addresses these challenges.

A plethora of tracking systems, monitoring and communications systems offer a new set of costly and labor intensive requirements. Software Service Architecture needs a new way to respond.  i-Seaports™ is such a response. i-Seaports is dedicated to to gaining a new level of Command and Control that is focused on commercial success. This success depends on seaports establishing themselves as viable players in secure trade relations.

i-Seaports, has built in capabilities for connecting to web-based security and tracking monitoring services and databases. Multiple types of sensor and database tracking solutions may be linked or integrated to vessel tracking, berthing, and cargo loading and unloading. i-Seaports security monitoring solution has the capacity for an infinite number of hyper-links to web-based URLs or IP addresses where digitalized browser-viewable data is being transmitted. i-Seaports web-based platform can link to these sensor-based surveillance and tracking devices to monitor specific activity such as AIS for arriving and departing vessels, or web-cams for monitoring loading and unloading activities at berths. Some types of sensor and database tracking solutions that may be linked or integrated include:

• AIS Ships Tracking: Automated Identification System tracking ships
• PTZ Web-Cams: Pan/Tilt/Zoom web-cams
• Containerized Cargo Location Tracking
• Cargo Radiation and Content Scanning

Communications Coordination

i-Seaports views the communications of the seaport enterprise as the heart of the connectivity required between the port, its clients, its vendors, security, enforcement, 1st responders and others who play a role in the desired secure and profitable trade relations. i-Seaports has an extensive array of communications and events management capabilities that can be configured to your seaport operational requirements — traffic management, meetings, conference calls, project tracking, asset reservations, and much more. These capabilities include:

New web-based communications solutions are emerging at a rapid pace. i-Seaports provides a platform for the future integration of these services as they become available and affordable for seaport managers.

Financial Control

i-Seaports is a full ERP sales, electronic billing and collections, payroll, vendor, tariff management, property and tenant leasing management, accounting, and an audit ready system with customizable interfaces for every user and service with the latest accounting techniques such as advanced revenue recognition. i-Seaports communications, traffic management, and security tracking processes provide financial management with data needed for a seamless billing and collections processes.

Clients of the seaport experience a real ROI since they can now manage 24/7 their own vessels reservations and monitor the movement and activity while in the port. For instance if the port has web-cams they can click on the berth where loading and unloading is in progress and view the activity. Clients can also view estimates of expense before they enter the port and pay their deposits and fees due on-line to the port.

The Ports ROI is greatly increased with no hardware or software to install or maintain and satisfied and informed customers. The seaports real-time reporting system keeps them totally on top of their financial condition and audit ready at all times. Setting up the chart of accounts, fiscal year, tariff schedule, bank reconciliation interface, and reporting services essential to a clean internal and external auditing process are easy in i-Seaports.

Ecommerce Marketing

i-Seaports offers extensive marketing advantages for building your port’s business. Built-in Ecommerce, Sales Force Automation (SFA), web-store and web-marketing with the reporting and statistical analysis capabilities give you a competitive edge over other less robust IT solutions.

i-Seaports begins and ends with winning, and retaining customer loyalty. Over time your seaport builds an incredible source of knowledge about every aspect of its business activity and international trade relations collected in one centrally integrated database. This centralized data store is a goldmine for internal analysis for planning the future of your business, and external marketing campaigns and presentations of performance and capabilities in marketing your port’s services.

i-Seaports enables you to move from an environment of running processes in compartmented vacuums to treating them as inter-related flows. It enables you to interact with people, processes and technologies across the entire organization to get your job done, help them do theirs and maintain high levels of customer satisfaction. Everyone in the enterprise has some relationship with every customer – traffic, communications, security and finance -- and i-Seaports enables you to see and manage that effectively.