Developing World Class ERP Solutions for the Maritime Industry: Harbour Mastery® Inc.

“ Headquartered in Tampa, Florida, Harbour Mastery® Inc. is a provider of management and security software and technologies through a global network of technology and marketing alliance partners.”

Harbour Mastery®Inc.was founded in 2003 to develop a new generation of interoperable ERP solutions that address the need for new approaches to both traffic and finance management and security among seaports, marinas and maritime industries.

Prior to 2003, Harbour Mastery^® principals have engaged directly in developing and delivering seaports management solutions since 1991. Since 2003, the company has developed a series of solutions to address the variety of operational circumstances for seaports, lake ports, river ports, marinas, waterways and canals and for the many types of maritime industries who do business together in those locations. Harbour Mastery^®’s flagship products, i-Seaports^™ ERP on the NetSuite^® platform and the i-Marinas™ stand-alone module has maintained their Built for NetSuite^®(BFN) certification status for the past 5 years.

Remaining Small & Building Worldwide Partnerships
The company’s strategy has been to remain small and build relationships and delivery of services through partnerships world-wide. The i-Seaports™ ERP solution was first to market with a fully cloud-based SaaS solution for seaports and marinas. While the take-off has been slow, Harbour Mastery^® is positioned to respond and has established itself with other major NetSuite^® partners globally to do so. Rather than trying to do everything, Harbour Mastery^® establishes regional partners who “team” to provide the full NetSuite^® ERP solution with the i-Seaports^™ and i-Marinas™ industry specific modules that the maritime industry needs in an ERP environment. Each client is therefore served by a regional/local partner and Harbour Mastery^® as a global partner.

Over 95% of world trade passes through the world’s 6000+ deep-water seaports with containerized cargo being the fastest growing sector along with bulk trade commodities like oil and gas. With 25 years of experience since 1991 in seaport vessel and cargo logistics management, Harbour Mastery^® is uniquely positioned to partner with NetSuite^® direct sales, channel sales and NetSuite^® partners of all types to add seaports and marinas to their portfolios anywhere in the world.

As the first-to-market with a SaaS cloud-based solution in 2007 for maritime industry, Harbour
Mastery^® has accumulated a great deal of experience from ports in North America, Australia, Middle East and Latin America. It also has an extensively developed solution easily customizable for the uniqueness of each seaport or marina.

The NetSuite^®/i-Seaports™ ERP Solution
Seaports are a vast and complex industry. In one single seaport, multiple lines of business and revenue benefit highly from a fully integrated ERP system like NetSuite^®/i-Seaports^™ ERP.

From the NetSuite^® ERP point of view all the factors essential to enterprise management such as HR, payroll, billing, and accounting are there in the platform. Some of the more unique expectations in seaports management, since seaports are most frequently government owned and controlled entities include:

• Highly negotiated Minimum Financial Guarantee frameworks with annual and multi- year, multi-tiered terms.
• Fixed asset and equipment management and maintenance.
• Property and Leasing Management.
• Grants and Loans management.
• Engineering and construction management.

The i-Marinas™ Module of the i-Seaports™ BFN as deployed provides not only all of the NetSuite^® ERP platform capabilities but also management of:

• A marina complex of over 500 slips with daily security checking and transient billing management.
• A Shipyard repairs and Dry dock area.
• An RV Park.
• Covered and dry storage areas.
• Property and leasing management.
• Point of Sale Marina Stores.
• Customer self-service web-store.

In the maritime industry domain, port operating systems (POS) and terminal operating systems (TOS) have long been divorced from ERP systems. Harbour Mastery^® brings them together into one system. With Net­Suite^® ERP and its web-services integration capabilities, the company can also offer multi-tiered solutions when a seaport desires to maintain a legacy system or opt for highly specialized functionality that would otherwise be cost prohibitive to develop.

Harbour Mastery®’s positioning with NetSuite® as a publicly traded company since 2008 leverages NetSuite^®’s global scale of 20,000+ companies in 140 countries. This drives NetSuite^®’s R&D to constantly innovate and therefore allows Harbour Mastery® to constantly adopt and adapt that innovation for seaports.

Key Clientele

• Tampa Port Authority, Tampa FL, USA
• Canaveral Port Authority, Canaveral FL, USA
• Oregon International Port of Coos Bay, Coos Bay, Oregon, USA
• Port of Portland Private Ltd., Portland Victoria, Australia

Clients Speak
“The Harbour Mastery^®NetSuite^®/i-Seaports^™ solution has given us the platform we needed for a fully integrated ERP platform for all of our port management needs.” – Kenneth Washington, CIO, Tampa Port Authority

“In the Harbour Mastery^®NetSuite^®/i-Marinas™ solution we have not only a superb software vendor but a true solution provider who is always there when we need them and responds with creative solutions we can count on.” – Hans Gundersen, CFO, Oregon International Port of Coos Bay

Geographies
NetSuite® is a multi-currency, multi-language, highly adaptable platform that allows Harbour Mastery^® to go anywhere in the 140 countries it now serves.

Future Outlook
Seaports as a niche market have typically considered themselves victims of integrators who cobble together three or four systems to try to serve them as a client. We want to make it clear to them, as we are doing with our present clients, that with NetSuite^® ERP as a PaaS and SaaS solution this is no longer a necessary approach. Their cost savings can be 50 to 75 percent, as has been experienced by our existing clients.

Meet the Leader

M. George Walters, CEO George began his software development career in 1982 and matured his skills in database management, client/server, windows, and now SaaS applications development over the past 33 years. Son of a US Coast Guard veteran and Son-in-law of a WWII Naval officer, growing up in Florida, he developed a deep understanding of the importance of maritime industry in trade and defense. After consulting with many companies including IBM as a project manager, George and two development partners formed Harbour Mastery® to commercially develop and deliver maritime industry management products to seaports and marinas.

“We seek to push the envelope of extensibility that would empower ports and marinas of all sizes to seize the global market opportunity the internet offers.”