Operating ShipView with single or multiple licenses

Are you going to manage vessels not entirely owed by a single juridical unit? Then you should decide how to or not to keep owner data separable.

Any company about to purchase and use ShipView should read and consider the following very carefully. Otherwise you may easily run into an situation that is suboptimal for future data usability and security.

This is probably the single most important decision you have to make before starting with ShipView. Your chosen approach cannot easily be changed once started. Moreover, while NetStorm nearly always provide thorough advice, to the detail level you want on your use of ShipView, we can only point you out in a direction on this one. We cannot possibly know all operational details about your company, that add up to a conclusion in this matter. But don't worry, it is quite easy!

Please read the following all the way to the end, even if you seem to find "your solution" midway. Carefully consider which category is the best fit for your organization, then take a note of the recommended actions.

The discussion starts with making data separable for organizations that own or could want to own ShipView data. Hang on to our approach:
The times are gone, when immaterial values were only stuff like love and friendship ant things that couldn't be counted in dollars. Data is both immaterial and globally of tremendous value!

So, like with other assets, you must make sure you can access your data. While the case with a net bank account is fairly obvious, alliances that concider sharing a dataspace (a logical and isolated storage within a datastore/database), should carefully consider their needs for separating data, both during the intended use, and foreseeing that the alliance is split som day.

In the following, we will try to show that data must be separable to be fully valuable.

Reasons to keep owner data separable in ShipView

1. Control of data ownership
   A complete and accurate set of current and historical data on your business is worth a lot! Make sure that you can posess it! Your company should have technical and administrative boundaries ensuring that you and nobody else own the data you ought to claim.
2. Security against disclosure
   Carefully chosen license subdivision of dataspaces ensures that no one has access to more data than necessary. While there's no special reason to distrust individuals, those that you even work with or do business with, it is always better to limit all unnecessary data access.
3. Security against errors in data
   Like above, reduce the risks of someone accidentally altering data "elsewhere".
4. Security against data loss
   Like above, what if someone deleted all your data since they didn't recognice and need it?

Ways to keep owner data separable in ShipView

1. Group management
   Vessel groups will effectively divide data across the system, regardless of functional area. This might be a good choice for owners that have common insurance management for subsidiaries with different activities, say one dry-bulk company and one company of LPG carriers.
2. Client management
   Can be used instead of or in addition to group management. Assign participant roles, like vessel ownership and policy holder, throughout the system. Available with enterprise level 5 (E5), can be upgraded to at any time without "transition hassle".
   If your company also manages insurance for one or more companies not wholly-owned, choosing client management may be better.
3. Multi-license management
   Can be used instead of or in addition to client and group management. This is the only way for a fully separable approach.

Choosing single or multiple licenses, the "rule"

Imagine in the foreseeable future, all relevant types and ranges of reports, any report or summary screen that you could wish, with some business value.

Will the reports span data of all owners at the same time?
Put differently, will you be using global claims statistics reports and renew/negociate covers altogether?
If yes, go for a single license. Otherwise you won't get global reports.

On the other hand, if global reports are irrelevant, select multiple licenses whenever you can. That is, if you can separate just one owner company that should not be included in the most wide spread report that you need, put them in a separate license! The cost is about the same, and you will benefit form it later.

If you are not sure if there will be any common insurance activity with all owners, consider this:
Has the individual owner already established a requirement of having data in a separate license/datastore? If not, consider a single license and rely on the possibility of a future "fission export" feature in ShipView. (no date is set for such a function)

Use this set of rules when choosing your way in the following.

Your way of using ShipView

The single owner company

Typically, most of the business tasks relevant in this context (insurance cover and/or claims management) are taken care of in-house. Therefore, data entry and editing are taken care of in-house.

There's only one owner company, so you will definitely not need more than one license

Sceanrio variations

Technical management, including most incident/claims management tasks, could be the responsibility of another company. Still, this is a one license situation, since employees from the technical management company can be given user credentials for the same license. Those users can be limited in access and system operations, for example restrained from editing insurance covers.

The company managing a group of owner subsidiaries

Choose group, client or multi-license management.
The situation is similar to above, except that subsidiary owner companies might be treated as one owner company. This approach can typically be chosen if the each subsidiary owns its own type of vessels, say reefers, cruise vessels and car carriers. Establishing vessel groups can effectively keep each company's data apart when needed (per group reports etc), and keep all vessels together when needed (claim stastisics reports and similar, when negotiating cover renewal for all fleets together)

Scenario variations

#1: One owner is not part of your owner group.
The same rules apply for common insurance activity, but the choice of an extra license is somewhat closer. Especially if you have any agreements with this owner, requiring termination of services and systems/data separation in short notice.

#2: Different clients/owners have insurance covers on the same vessel
Two companies that otherwise are owners within the same owner alliance, can take out different types of insurance covers on one vessel. Say that one is the owner and take out Hull& Machinery, while the operating company take out certain P&I insurance types. If mult license management is undesirable, client management is necessary (could be better than mult license management since you save som extra data entry in this special case). Simple group management would be very untidy, althoug it could teoretically work.

The commercial management company or broker

If the broker is more like an "in-house broker", see the previous. Otherwise, see next.

The large scale commercial broker or insurance company

Multi-license management is probably best. You could purchase a discounted bundle of licenses for resale, and either client or group management can be chosen within each license/customer.