Since 2017 Compagnie Maritime Nantaise has been operated as a subsidiary of Sogestran Group with a fleet of more than 200 units and 800 employees. SERTICA has been implemented on six vessels operating from Nantes and six passenger vessels operating from Brest. The company mainly operates in the business of industrial and specialized sea transportation of for example military material or launcher components.
With a high focus on quality and safety, Compagnie Maritime Nantaise needs a fleet management system matching all their demands. First, the system needs to be in French and Bureau Veritas and DNV certified. Secondly, optimizing costs and reducing the number of systems is important, as well as increasing data management and digitalizing invoice management.
A certified CMMS system in French
Compagnie Maritime Nantaise is the last privately-owned shipping company in France and operates mainly in Europe. To optimize maintenance management, the shipping company did a European market research to find the best suitable CMMS system.
Cédric Grossat, CMMS Administrator tells, “SERTICA came up as the best match out of 12 different suppliers. The system meets our demands in terms functionality and DNV/BV certifications. Furthermore, RINA Digital Solutions is willing to translate the system into French, which means that we can use the system both in English and French.”
Inside SERTICA each user can set the language of the system. This signifies that many different languages may be used within the same organization, which is an advantage for Compagnie Maritime Nantaise having crew from different parts of the world.
Optimizing costs with a reduced number of systems and increased data management
SERTICA offers the range of functionality needed for Compagnie Maritime Nantaise to replace two existing systems. All data related to maintenance, procurement and HSQE is included in SERTICA. This is beneficial when optimizing internal processes and measuring the performance of the entire fleet.
Emmanuel Lefeuvre, Technical Manager at Compagnie Maritime Nantaise explains, “Our processes are becoming more complex as we grow as a company. Therefore, it makes sense to invest in a fleet management system with more functionality. We need a system that gives us an overview of the many tasks and documentation across our departments.”
The ambition is to increase data management and share valuable information between various stakeholders. Using data proactively to improve the performance of the entire fleet gives Compagnie Maritime Nantaise a competitive advantage. One way of using the data actively is to set up automatic reports to get an overview of all technical activities. These reports may be generated for different targets, such as superintendents or the management, and may have different purposes.
Cédric explains, “We expect to improve various processes related to managing our safety documents, certificates, procedures and manuals. Furthermore, managing stock centrally through SERTICA for all our vessels is expected to reduce costs significantly.”
The dashboards in SERTICA allows Compagnie Maritime Nantaise to visualize key numbers and KPIs across the fleet. Thereby they can react fast to data and become more data driven in their decision making.
Reducing time spent on invoicing
The benefits of the digitalization process at Compagnie Maritime Nantaise became evident once they decided to implement the Invoice Management module and a third-party invoice scanning tool.
Emmanuel tells, “Before we handled invoice management manually which is quite time consuming. SERTICA will optimize and automate our processes, which will give us a better overview and free resources. The obvious benefit includes saving time on administrative tasks related to invoice management. At the same time, we build a strong database with reliable data, which can assist us in negotiating better contracts with our suppliers.”
Cédric agrees and continues, “With a more accurate data analysis, we can better challenge our suppliers. In general, high quality data is our aim. To achieve this, it is essential that we have a reliable software that ensures perfect data synchronization between office and vessel.”
Partnership built on trust and network
Compagnie Maritime Nantaise attended a SERTICA conference before signing a contract with RINA Digital Solutions. This was a unique opportunity to hear how other shipping companies perceive both the SERTICA system and RINA Digital Solutions as a partner.
Cédric tells, “Speaking to companies such as DFDS and Euronav at the SERTICA conference has been extremely helpful in our decision making. We quickly got an understanding of RINA Digital Solutions as a strong and agile partner who walk the extra mile in relation to support and implementation.”
Cédric continues, “We had various constructive dialogues with other SERTICA users and RINA Digital Solutions, who was open to listen to our ideas. No doubt that SERTICA is a very reliable and flexible system, but it was the people behind SERTICA and existing SERTICA users that convinced us to sign. On a scale from 1 to 10, I would rate RINA Digital Solutions’ professional qualifications as 11. The combination of being very relaxed and at the same time extremely professional is a funny and good mix.”
