Frequently asked questions about ShipView

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• Where's the competition?

  A - We don't know! We have regularly been in contact with a number of insurance administrators, and none of them have even been close to find an alternative, and "none of them were even close to do the job". We have specially asked our contacts about a few companies about the competition, and they say there are none for real!
  Still, we have two "competitors" in special scenarios, the spreadsheet and the broker. With really low cost manpower and inconsistency and reduced quality and precision is accepted in reports, the spreadsheet is frequently chosen. Or you leave all insurance tasks to a broker, which practically leaves you without "the full view" and without the best prices. This is not uncommon in lack of personnel resources.

• Regular spreadsheets are fine for some purposes, but large amounts of data inevitably seem to break formulas, reduce clarity, and often cause a mess. Can we avoid this?

  A - Yes. ShipView is a very stable and consistency system, offering the user guidance and error checking. This cannot be accomplished with a spreadsheet in a practical way.

• My spreadsheets cannot be used for statistics. Sheets cannot be stacked, as the columns referring to named insurers would not match from one period to the next. Any cure?

  A - Yes. ShipView is designed to store and compare data almost regardless of complexity in structure.

  You can't work around this problem over time, using spreadsheets for everything, you need to deal with it. Not only do you have insurers in alternating column (or row) positions, you also have variations in the total number of markets, discontinued insurers and new ones.

  In all cases, this problem is gone once moving your data to ShipView.

• I try to create different views in Excel for various summaries and reports, but always end up editing too many spreadsheet copies. Any cure?

  A - Yes. You will enter data only one time in ShipView, only one data set is stored centrally, and you maintain and edit only one set of data. But this set of data allows for a number of built-in views and reports, just a few clicks away.

• How fast can I find information in ShipView?

  A - Even if you have huge amounts of registered data, the most complex reports are returned in no more than a few seconds. All normal views and reports are returned instantly. We also designed for quick navigation. You can easily pick up and e-mail a summary or report while speaking to someone on the phone - no hard waiting.

• Can I access the ShipView fully while on the move, at my home office or anywhere using the Internet?

  A - Yes, from any computer on your office, home office, branch office, Internet cafe, with wireless or mobile phone connections from laptops or mobile devices. Today's mobile connections work remarkably well with the light webpages of ShipView, even in countries with low bandwidths.

  If ShipView is installed for access on a local area network only, your network administrator could either change this by setting up the server for secured public connection, or provide you with a VPN logon (virtual private network).

• Is ShipView limited in any way that we should know of?

  A - We are extremely close to say that there are no limitations. The only one we could think of is that ShipView doesn't directly represent more than two layers of brokers, or having nested liability structures. This is intentionally by design, as we otherwise would lead the user to tedious data entry that would be mostly hassle. Anyway, the conveniently placed comment fields around the system would at all times help the user who likes to add detailed information of such.

• Will ShipView help manage all my insurance related documents, like paper documents, scans, video clips, sound recordings and pictures?

  A - Yes, ShipView Enterprise Edition links any files in a tidy and accessible way. You can also scan and upload paper documents directly to the database.

  To be perfectly safe: Avoid uploading extremely large uncompressed video clips as you would have to wait that extra time if someone later has a look at it using a slow mobile Internet connection. You should also avoid uploading file formats that require very special viewing software (e.g. CAD vector graphics), as you otherwise would not be able to have a look using another computer with no special software installed.

  You won't have problems if you choose a common format, which is feasible almost all the time.

• What can go wrong starting with ShipView?

  A - ShipView has worked nicely for our customers over the years!
  We should mention a few things, though: Have a plan. Have some time.
  

  ShipView is quick and easy to learn. This is definitely true considering the complex tasks of the system.
  But you must have a basic understanding of your company's insurance related data, or you will probably struggle in the beginning.
  Likewise, you can probably skip a lot in the manual, but please be prepared to read some, or ask the helpdesk. At least, in the beginning!

• IT personnel: Do we install ShipView or is it a hosted service?

  A - It does both equally well.
  But we think you will find the choice of hosting at NetStorm favorable, unless your company policies absolutely disallows external installations.
  This is our recommendation even if your company already have hosted all your IT-systems externally with a third party. (at least, make sure the 3rd party has knowledge and experience in the area of web applications, using ASP.NET + SQL Server)

• IT personnel: We have been using a legacy system, and would like to access all this data without using more than one system. Does ShipView have means of import?

  A - Yes, we can help you with importing your other data. However, as far as we know, no other similar system exposes any standard methods, business or technical, for the sake of data exchange. This means that we will most likely experience some "lack of precision" in the data during transfer to ShipView, because a convenient export has probably not been planned from the start. Maybe this won't be a problem to you, and maybe you decide to re-enter portions of data like some of our users have done.

• IT personnel: In case we later should want to move to another system, will NetStorm provide export facilities for our data?

  A - Yes, we can export entire sets of XML data providing a basic level of documentation.