The positive development of productivity levels has been accomplished due to the more rational use of personnel and available resources and technology. This has been the outcome of the implementation and running of the new integrated CRM System. Functional processes and data flow improvements, which are by now well established, have produced significant working efficiencies and synergies in the organizational sections; a summary of the most important is listed here-below:
• Crew operation groups are no longer involved in the invoice handling and coding procedure. The new in-house workflow process, as described, abolished the need for crew superintendents to physically receive invoices. Consequently, their man- hours saved are utilized for other activities mainly related to planning and recruitment tasks. Moreover, crew superintendents can now obtain access to meaningful cost information, which enables them to optimize their decision making process on operational matters. In addition to those work related advantages, some indirect, non-measurable benefits were also accomplished. The main aspect here is that crew superintendents are no longer engaged in administrative work and are now free to focus on the operational front line with clients’ matters. They can extensively discuss crew planning and crew performance as well as any other subject the ship-owners may deem of interest, thus giving the company’s customers a feeling of being highly valued and cherished. It should be noted that crew superintendents are customer-contact
employees, whose role is particularly important. They are the people whose main
duties bring them into regular contact with customers, mainly by telephone or through e-mail. Therefore, the new process provides them with excellent opportunities to tighten the bond between the company and the customer, an advantage that certainly cannot be expressed in clear measurable amounts. However, without any doubt, such close relationships form the base on which a customer-driven company can build, and, more importantly, expand its business operations.
• Apart from freeing the crew operational groups from administrative tasks and paperwork, the new workflow process allows the Administrators in the Crew Disbursements Section to handle almost all incoming invoices and disbursement accounts on their own without the need to transfer them to any other in-house operational section. In other words, it provides them with an empowerment, which is the authority to make decisions and to have better control over their work:
“From employees’ point of view, empowerment increases their creativity and initiative, as well as their commitment to the organization, by allowing them to work with autonomy.” (Jonathan et al, 2004:84)
During the journal entry process, all vital data related to the vessels and seafarers are conveniently available in the customized journal entry screen of the AP Module, which is the main IT instrument available to administrators (users). Consequently, the efficiency of cost checking, verification, and posting business transactions is significantly improved.
Given the fact that the bookkeeping transactions are interfaced from the AP Module directly to the ledger, the crew disbursement section takes the full responsibility for data correctness, as well as for the required cost control. As documents are no longer moved between various in-house sections, but instead are initially collected and remain until their final processing to the ledger in the same place within the company’s building, tracing of their location has been very much simplified.
• Refundable expenses are automatically identified through various business rules established in the AP Module and subsequently transferred to the Financial
Section (Sales) to be charged to the various ship-owners. As a result, the time and
effort needed for the financial administrators to trace and invoice refundable expenses has almost been optimized. Moreover, the computerized recording of refundable expenses significantly minimizes the risk of them being overlooked. Given the fact that this improvement in the work process leads to major reductions
in defects, it improves the quality of sales and invoicing work. It should be noted that quality excellence derives from well-designed work processes and
administrative systems that stress prevention (Evans, 2005). Finally, the
availability of data related to the invoice order with all supportive information in a computerized system has substantially minimized the contact time with other sections, resulting in improved productivity and overall quality of work in this section.
• The Insurance Section no longer receives cost related source documents including general medical expenses. Since the cost is allocated on the basis of a single seafarer, the AP module produces insurance claim accounts that analytically report medical cost and related details of the case involved. Based on various business validations, the system easily recognizes the limited medical cases for which the claimed amount exceeds the franchise agreed with the Insurers, and thus making it eligible for refund. Consequently, hardcopies of original invoices are only requested for a small number of automatically identified cases, without the need to create any paper flow for the majority of cases, which are not eligible for refund. As a result, inter-section communication and paper flow has been significantly reduced, freeing time to concentrate on the actual case related tasks.
• The Crew Accounts Section, which handles seafarers’ salary accounts, starts the monthly wages calculation from a screen that shows the seafarers’ positions included in the CRM contract for the vessel on one side and on the other side the crew presently on board as well as those who signed off during the past month. Further information is obtained from the FIS, such as the party to be charged for the salary of seafarers who are on board but not included in the CRM contract. The administrator is then able to conveniently trace and control wages cost for the big volume of ‘extraordinary’ business cases and consequently charge cost to the appropriate party. Through these features, the productivity and quality of the relevant tasks carried out by the section’s administrators could be significantly increased by enabling them to efficiently and punctually process the wages of the growing number of Marlow seafarers.
As usually happens with any major change of traditional or routine organizational working practices, next to the significant benefits obtained by the implementation of the new system, there were, of course, still some problems and employee dissatisfaction to be observed. These were systematically recorded and evaluated by the Project Management team. Among others, the evaluation phase of action research aimed at identifying specific problems and at allowing the next research cycle to start. During the first two years, the project team monitored two cycles to run, always via the same route, stations of an action research. The process and data flow system was therefore continuously enhanced with additional improvements, by which the productivity as well as the quality performed in all sections could not only be maintained at high levels but even be further increased. It is expected that all the above-mentioned advantages and positive changes will lead to a remarkable boost in the quality of services rendered, resulting in a high customer satisfaction and consequently a higher intangible value of the company, which clearly constitutes an invaluable competitive benefit.