Welcome to our Flex maritime logistics blog site. We provide the most modern, integrated logistics and ERP system for the maritime supply chain industry (liner companies, tramp companies, NVOCC, forwarders, agencies, ports, terminals, storage and distribution companies). We hope you enjoy your stay at our blog site.

FlexShip is an end-to-end integrated finance and operations system and supports commercial processes (CRM), trades and operations (voyage calculations), bookings, equipment control, agency network portal functionality, documentation, customs compliancy.

FlexPort is an integrated system that supports all financial, operational and logistical processes for ports and terminal operators: contracting and invoicing, port call registration and handling, CFS (container freight station), warehousing/3PL.

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Our FlexShip solution is also suitable for Chartering & Operations of Heavy Lift operators, either offering Semi-liner and / or Tramp shipping. It is designed completely from anoperators’ perspective and is developed to help operators to improve on typical business goals. You can download our fact sheet here.

A general question we get when talking to prospects is whether and how FlexShip can handle documents. In our newest release we developed it quite far based on all comments we received. For
instance we can now setup mandatory documents per table and field values and thus relate it to specific booking or cargo situations. For example for dangerous cargo it is now possible to setup that a specific document should be attached to the UNNO record in the database. From the highest level on it is easy to see  whether all mandatory documents are present on the lower levels.

Based on the fact that a mandatory document is not present, FlexShip can send out a related message to specific parties in a specified format. For instance if a DGD is not present 48hrs before the arrival date of the vessel, a message can automatically be send to the shipper. The system can handle multiple timings for different documents for the same booking.

For mandatory outgoing documents/messages the setup can be used as well. It can automatically trigger notifications to specified employees or parties to inform them that action needs to be taken. The system in this sense can notify users that for instance a booking confirmation was not send before a certain time limit.

Along with this all incoming and outgoing documents and messages are saved inside or outside the database (SharePoint). Documents can be gathered from lower levels to be printed/send in bulk, for instance based on a booking or a port call.  Transaction logs are kept in the database for compliancy reasons and can be viewed on relevant screens.

As stated in my previous blog posting, organizations with multiple processes/activities can be setup in Flex Maritime logistics. Sometimes these organizations have divisions or entities that take care of these activities and processes. In these cases we use of the multi company setup of Dynamics AX 2012. We are fully compliant with Microsoft’s Dynamics AX 2012 new structure and licensing policies.

In our maritime logistics solution we look at activities as perspectives, which can be defined as a point of view towards processes, data and functionality. It is possible to setup each entity as the same, a different or even as a mixed perspective. The idea here is that many times the solution handles the same data, but from a different perspective and that data because of that can flow through the application from entity to entity. Many possible situations can be considered:

• the booking from a forwarder towards a liner agent
• the booking of the liner agent towards a principal
• the booking data of a vessel operator flowing through an owned and self-operated terminal
• the creation of bookings from multiple entities on one vessel / voyage

Because Flex Maritime logistics is  a supply chain solution, this means that we have to consider the fact that organizations can be single, multi or mixed perspective and that this can be in a single or multi entity environment. In other words, we always keep in mind that there are no fixed roles in the supply chain. Many companies need  the same kind of functionality but for different reasons.

A good example in Flex is the support per perspective for stripping and stuffing of containers:

• Forwarder, optimizes revenue by consignment of LCL shipments into the FCL container
• Terminal, as a service for vessel operators or forwarders, in combination with storage and other warehouse services
• Vessel operator, for ships convenience reasons, or to be able to accept LCL shipments
• Bulk logistics provider (3PL), receives FCL containers and strips them as a service to the customer before storing the cargo in their warehouses

In a single perspective situation processes are clear and as Flex maritime logistics, a single best of breed solution could handle this perfectly. However, in complexer situations best of breed solutions can no longer solve the case by itself.  We see more and more operational software islands, different vendors, complexer interfaces, data warehousing solutions etcetera. 

Flex maritime logistics is delivered as one integrated package to span multiple entities, perspectives, activities and processes. This means that all perspectives will be available to the customer, whether for use within one or multiple entities and eliminating the need for one or multiple best of breed solutions. Because of this almost any supply chain scenario, from origin to destination, or from factory to grocery, can be handled by Flex. If situations are non-standard then existing functionality can be reordered or reused (object oriented) and, in certain situations, maintained by customers themselves (open source code), building on the software library that comes with AX / Flex.