The Motorship speaks to France’s Opsealog

Full transcript of the audio:

Damien Bertin, business director Opsealog: Thanks very much for the opportunity to discuss today. This is also my pleasure. We actually converted a trial pilot phase with Bourbon into a long term contract recently. And this is a really massive achievement in our journey at Opsealog. We got started a bit less than 10 years ago, with one main objective, to transform data into actions and to bring efficiency into the maritime activities. Thanks to digitalisation and data solutions, this recent success with Bourbon highlights what we what we have been able to develop and what we keep developing at Opsealog. Basically, Bourbon is one of the leaders when it comes to the provision of offshore supply vessel services. And as such they want one of their key strategic objectives is to be proactive, working with their clients, the charterers energy companies in optimising operations. And namely, to reduce the environmental impact and fuel consumption.

David Stevenson, editor of The Motorship: One thing I’ve noticed you report saying is that the company is focused on software, not hardware. So in terms of fleet management, how do you bring about the reductions in emissions without actually putting in any sort of hardware or devices like that?

DB: That’s what makes Opsealog look quite unique in terms of positioning and solutions, because we are not only a software provider, indeed a part of our services and solutions include software. I can detail that further we, but we position ourselves more as an efficiency service provider. That means we are partners of our customers all along the digitalisation journey. This goes from data collection down to recommendations and tangible actions. So that means.

Our solutions, our experts first collect data. For this we have a dedicated software. we collect the data, we integrate all this data from our software, but also from hardware. We can combine our forces as a software provider with hardware providers. Once all these are integrated, we analyse all this data with again the main objective, the strategic objective to transform this data into actions.

That means, based on the analysis that we have conducted internally and that our dedicated algorithms help conduct, we are able to issue recommendations to share recommendations to our customers in order to reduce their fuel consumption, minimise the area and environmental impact. And that was one of the main objective at Bourbon.

DS: So you have to sample the data first. I’ve spoken to a few maritime software providers and you mentioned it a while ago. What makes your method unique from other competitors in your space?

DB: There are several companies and more and more companies because they’re this trend on, on digitalisation and using the power of data to optimise operations is definitely increasing. I would say that what makes us unique is our positioning in terms of the data journey. As I mentioned, we go from collection to recommendation and at each step we have identified all the challenges, all the prerequisites to make this journey efficient.

first data that is collected has to be of good quality. It must be of good quality. We have developed specific algorithms, specific checks on that integration has to be also.

Safe, but in terms of a cyber security. For this we have been using what is best on the market in terms of cyber security and we also conduct tests, then analysis is probably where we bring.

Specific added value because it is quite easy to fall into a trap trying to analyse all the data because as you may know, vessels are more and more connected, so more and more able to generate thousands, even millions of data points. And if you don’t know exactly what you are looking for, you may be lost. With those all this amount of data and this is where our combination of maritime and data expertise is to my knowledge, unique on the on the market because having.

Data experts without the maritime knowledge will not bring all the benefits from the data and in the same time, having only maritime experts without the data expertise, you will lose the benefit of analysing data. This is this combination of maritime and data expertise that makes us really unique and in few words, this was the really the DNA, the backbone, the starting point of the company because the founder himself is a former master at sea and this is how he had the vision that vessels were producing lots of data.

That cement themselves were generating reports valuable information that basically were lost in the process and that were potentially a huge source of information that could be used to optimise the operations. Recently I had probably one of the best answer we could get on that highlighting our difference on the market from our one from one of our customers he said: ”You’re not a software provider, you are a solution as a service provider.”

DS: SaaS? Software as a service?

DB: You provide a SAS, but S doesn’t stand for software but for solutions because you have the software, the IT, the infrastructure and also the human and the expertise. And that helps us and that’s how we can go beyond just providing software and let our customers work with the software.

DS: Can your solution be provided to vessels of all types in all types of maritime industry. And if so, can you give me some examples of perhaps areas that your company might be able to aid with? Bourbon is a certain type of sector.

Can your solution be provided to all types?

DB: It can. We have had some experience with other maritime sectors.

But today, our solutions are really dedicated mainly dedicated to offshore supply vessels (OSV) and sub sea vessels, all types of vessels working in the oil and gas field first.

Because the we are few experienced people working in the oiling gas industry myself, I’ve been working now for almost 20 years in this sector, the founder and CEO was a master at Sea, onboard HTS. Some other people also are working on the on the maritime industry and mainly in the in the oiling gas. And this sector is quite specific because the way vessels are operating is different. But technically yes, our solutions can work for other.

Maritime sectors challenges are a bit different on other sectors. Let’s take the example, for instance of container ships. What they the challenges they are facing are really different from the OSV. The container ship may say from Marseille, France to the east or West Coast of the US, and once they cast off they have fifteen 2025 days of transit. The optimisation is there. They can optimise their routes, they can optimise the way they operate. But there is not. So there is not as many.

Different kind of operations as they are for the OSV. It’s like if we compare to the truck industry the last mile delivery has more challenges than the truck driving from say UK to France because once they have started you don’t have the same challenges as when you are driving in a city where you start, stop, need to increase the speed the load. So that’s where today we play a role with OSVs because they are more like the last mile delivery compared to container ship.

But in our plan, that’s also part of the strategic plan of Opsealog we see data as an enabler for the other maritime sectors to optimise as well, maybe not optimise as much as we do on the OSVs but optimise other challenges and work on other challenges such as regulations such as mandatory reporting. But that’s part of that. That’s part of our strategic plan and this is something we are more and more exploring.

DS: Fantastic. I mean, you just mentioned data and regulations are becoming a thing that’s now intrinsic to the maritime sector.

How much of a role is that going to play in sort of the consideration of Opsealog’s plans and how you’re aligning with the emissions reductions and data sharing that sometimes intrinsic with these regulations, Damien?

DB: So this is something we have been following and we keep a close eye on the on the upcoming regulations, other maritime sectors, they already have to comply with some regulations and we have a strong focus on what is going to happen soon on the OSVs because there is no reason why the OSVs would not have to comply with the same kind of regulations. So not only we are following and monitoring what the regulations will become for the USS, but we want also to be.

Active participants to this kind of initiatives and try to be part of the discussions, the initiatives some ship owners like Bourbon for instance, they are not waiting for the regulations to apply, they anticipate they are proactive. So that’s also a significant achievement for us to work with the leader as a bourbon. Why? Because we are anticipating what we will be able to do together tomorrow when the regulations come into force. So we want to be part of all initiatives that are related to regulations. Because the regulations will more and more oblige stakeholders such as ship owners, charter owners, energy companies.

To report and reporting can be a challenge if you don’t use what is available as data today. Most of the ship owners they keep reporting via. I would say old fashioned solutions.

Like Excel sheets, even paper. At the end of the year when you have to report all your operations, all your gas emissions, if you need to go through 365 daily reports based on Excel, that’s a massive challenge and probably the reporting will face some issues with accuracy. The other option if you do that.

DS: Could you give me some actual examples in terms of cost savings your company can give to a ship owner?

DB: To a ship owner, they’re not facing the same kind of challenges and objectives as the charters are, because that’s a specificity as well of the OSV market. Most often charters are paying for fuel. So the cost of fuel is of a higher interest for energy companies because they pay their rate for the vessel. And on top of that they are in charge of paying also the fuel. But I can give you. A range on what we can provide.

What we are used to delivering, and this is proven, I mean we we have the details. The net return on investment that Opsealog help generate is minimum 200%, so that means. When one of our customers pay $1.00. It saves $2.00 net deducting the price of our solution. So and in average in terms of savings, that means something between 12%.

To 20% depending on the locations. Depending on the vessels types and on this we have had a contract now we have been collaborating with a very important customer in the Middle East for four years now and the return on investment is in this kind of range covering more than 100 vessels. And what is kind of magic here is that you can still discover areas for improvement.

There is always room for improvement as long as you properly manage the data from collection, integration, analysis and recommendation.

DS: So just to finish off, can you tell me what the future holds for Opsealog? What’s on the horizon, Damien?

DB: Look, I mean the future looks bright. There are so many options on the all the parameters of the future as a business director, I can only start by the business itself. Today we cover around 400 vessels in the world OSVs. They are around 4000, so there is still market share to be gained and a lot of new customers to get.

You previously mentioned the other maritime sectors. Yes, we are able working with the data to cover more of the maritime market.

Here the potential is even bigger, because vessels operating worldwide are around 70,000. So in terms of commercial perspective, really future looks bright. Also what is very encouraging is that the technologies themselves are progressing faster than ever.

You see more and more vessels connected vessels are more and more efficient when it comes to connectivity. That’s this brings lots of opportunities for analysis and ultimately more optimisation. As an example, on this we were working with the French Government on a specific project where we collect 3000 data points a minute.

And this is a trial. This is a pilot phase to assess all the use cases that will be able to be generated from these data points. Of course, fuel optimization, environmental impact reduction and also probably new use cases such as a auxiliary equipment use maintenance. So the potential is really huge. To be fair there is still a challenge on that.

Management of change is a challenge because the maritime industry is sometimes quite conservative.

That we see that more as an opportunity than a than a challenge because we we we have the experience of the maritime, a few of us again have been working in eastern industry for quite some time and to give you an example on the solutions we provide our reporting solution, reporting software has been designed by cement for cement. So we understand the challenges of the people at sea and we are trying our best to help them on a daily basis.

 DS: Fantastic, Damon, that’s been great. I really appreciate your time. It’s been interesting and illuminati