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24 August 2017
In 2016, Atlas Professionals launched Atlas Corporate Solutions (ACS), an online portal that allows our clients to view all of their crewing management data in one place. Our goal is to create value where others cannot, and our Online Development team is one department that is making this goal a reality. Our Chief Information Officer Luuk Kornelius is leading this team.
Being part of our vision
“Developing an online platform that we could integrate into our Client’s systems has always been a part of our strategy,” says Luuk, “back in 2012 Atlas decided to develop an online platform to support all of our businesses and Clients. We wanted show that our processes don’t stop at the walls of our offices.”
It’s important to understand the needs of our clients and the everyday issues they face, “our Clients and Professionals are very much involved in our business and processes. It has always been a part of our vision for external stakeholders to collaborate with us. When we began discussing the possibility of ACS we sat down with our Clients to discuss how this platform could be customised to suit their needs. We are lucky to have an in-house team that can develop this, whereas our competitors are limited to what their third party vendors can offer.” Atlas has developed three features within ACS to help our clients’ crew management processes.
ACS features
“One of our Clients had explained to us how difficult it was to avoid confusion about the ever changing planning between their planning department and their crewing agents. This Client has 30 vessels working across the Netherlands and needed a flexible crew. Confusion about planning introduces the risk that vessel crews are incomplete, which is a risk they cannot afford. They were therefore looking for a way to eliminate any miscommunication about the planning.
“The result was to build a portal that showed one version of the truth. We opened our online planning to the Client so that they could create an enquiry directly into our system. After receiving their enquiry, we selected the best Professionals for that role. Once a Professional was selected, this showed up as a black line on the plan board and the Client could view the Professional’s details and approve. The plan board is graphical, so there is no misunderstanding between departments and as all the information is one place it also reduced the amount of administration.
Another concern this client had was the compliance of the crew provided. They wanted to be confident that 100% qualified crew would be working on their vessels. However, time pressure often didn’t leave enough time for checking and validating all certificates. “We therefore decided to give the client online access to our pool of Professionals and the access to mark them as qualified or not. The system has been set up to only allow assigning qualified Professionals to Client enquiries. Working with this pre-qualified pool turned out to be a very effective way to eliminate non-compliance.”
Our clients guide us
The partnerships we have created with our clients has allowed Atlas to add more value to our Client’s businesses and develop new ways of working, “we have a strong focus in knocking down obstacles and making life easier. ACS is just a small part in accomplishing this vision. The collaboration between the operation teams has become more efficient and we value this relationship.
“It’s a great way to collaborate with our Clients, they guide us and show us how customising this system can benefit industry leaders worldwide: the possibilities are endless.”
