Ocean Technologies Group (OTG) has incorporated its crew management software-as-a-service (SaaS) tool, Compas, into its suite of services, introducing a third pillar alongside its learning and fleet management solutions.

The addition of the Crew Management SaaS platform to OTG’s portfolio demonstrates a big step in furthering its agenda to bring knowledge and enablement tools to empower the human element in shipping. The addition also reflects the increasing importance of effective management of human resource management to world trade.

OTG currently serves over a million seafarers, connecting them with maritime professionals ashore and providing support both in their work and career development.

The ongoing COVID crisis has introduced significant disruptions to seafarers and their shore-based colleagues in routine operations including crew changes, crew training, procurement, maintenance etc. With fewer personnel at sea and ashore and qualified crew harder to find, the importance of retaining talent and supporting seafarers in their work has never been more important. Ship managers are increasingly turning to SaaS that they can integrate across their fleet to enable compliant and efficient performance from their workforce and the vessels they manage.  

Manish Singh, CEO of OTG said: “Our group companies have a combined track record of over a hundred years in pro-actively delivering solutions for the most pressing challenges facing seafarers and ship managers. The current operating environment demands unified solutions to manage complex operations with efficient labour-saving workflows and improved data portability.  

“In our dialogue with blue-chip customers, we see a strong desire for joined up, turn-key solutions that enable insights across personnel and vessel performance and the monitoring and measurement of KPIs in a single place. With our new combined offering we have a great opportunity to make this dream a reality.”

“We have a comprehensive investment programme backing Cornel and the Compas team to add implementation and development capacity and bring transformative solutions to our customers.”

Compas CEO Cornel Ciocan commented: “We have enjoyed fruitful partnerships with OTG’s brands over the years and now as fellow OTG companies with even closer alignment of our platforms, we will be able to offer best-of-breed specialisation with “out of the box” interoperability, bringing significant efficiencies and new possibilities to our customers.”

Rune Lyngaas CEO of Tero Marine, the division that powers OTG fleet management solutions via its TM Master software platform, explained: “We see trends in the market that more and more customers want to buy fully integrated systems that include a full HR solution for Crew Management. We regard Compas as the best-in-class crew management solution and in joining forces we are now able to co-develop solutions that will bring an unparalleled value proposition for ship managers and seafarers with workflows across learning management, fleet management and crew management.  Almost every one of Compas’ customers already relies on OTG for learning and in many cases our TM master solutions. We know that bringing our companies together will be highly appreciated by our joint customers and our aim is to offer combined SaaS enablement to more of our customers going forward.”