Making Waves at SeaAsia: SingTel Unveiled CrewXchange@SingTel and Offers Free Broadband for Maritime Customers.

The availability of quality crew remains a key concern for maritime businesses today. As the shipping industry recovers from the 2009 economic slump, maritime companies looking to capture growth opportunities from the recovery, need to first focus on enhancing crew welfare to increase crew retention.

Value-adding to our maritime customers’ efforts in this arena, SingTel has developed a unique portal, CrewXchange@SingTel, recently unveiled at SeaAsia 2011. The one-stop portal, which is available complimentary to all SingTel maritime broadband customers, aims to help crew members stay connected with the maritime community, their companies, and with family and friends.

The ‘lightweight’ portal, which is optimized to cater to the bandwidth limitation onboard vessels, offers these key features that help seafarers stay connected while out at sea:
• Access emails
• Subscribe to news feeds
• Chat with family and friends via varied messenging platforms
• Communicate with headquarters via access to corporate Intranet sites
• Gain latest knowledge through e-learning sites
• Access entertainment content such as shopping, sports etc.
• Update on other items such as weather, stocks etc.

Maritime companies looking at improving intra-company communication amongst their crews can leverage the portal by setting up their private chat rooms within the portal. Looking ahead, SingTel also envisions positioning the portal as an enterprise communication and productivity platform for maritime companies. Plans are underway to build an eco-system of enterprise, social networking and productivity tools, so maritime companies looking at leveraging the portal can also look forward to increasing their operational efficiencies.

2011 Partner Summit: Network. Connect. Synergise.

At SingTel, we value our partners and have designed the annual Partner Summit to be an ideal forum for key channel management and senior SingTel executives to share valuable insights, align strategies and strengthen partnerships.

One highlight of the two-day event is the sharing on ‘Shipping Markets Overview’ by Mr Marcus Hand, Editor, Seatrade Asia Week. As the shipping industry recovers slowly from the 2009 financial crisis, here is his take on the outlook of the individual maritime sectors in the next few years:

• Containers: Though particularly hard hit during the economic crisis, container shipping managed to recoup the estimated $15billion losses in the record year of 2010. However, with container companies continuing to fight for market share instead of profitability, coupled with the expected launch of an estimated 54 ultra large container vessels this year – the sector may be hard hit by the current slump in container freight rates.
  

• Dry Bulk Shipping: Mired in a rollercoaster ride in the past few years, dry bulk ship owners are facing a worrying trend where their customers, major trading houses and mining companies are looking at having their own vessels to reduce their exposure to the volatile freight markets.
  

• Tanker: The oversupply of ships is also taking a toll on tanker companies, which are mostly operating below cost levels. With global demand for oil doubling over the last 40 years, the size of very large crude carrier fleet has doubled in the last 10 years. The continued upward trend in oil prices is expected to further dampen the demand of this sector.

Other factors affecting the market include the worsening threat of Somali pirates and the continued upward trend in oil prices.

SingTel Partners can help their maritime customers better navigate the challenges of the maritime industry by investing in info-communication technology (ICT) that will give them complete visibility and better control over their maritime businesses.

According to Mr Tay Yang Hwee, Business Director, SingTel Satellite, the key is in delivering customer centric solutions, instead of ‘band-centric’ solutions, so maritime companies can have an integrated communications infrastructure to improve operational efficiencies and enhance crew welfare.

Backed by SingTel’s unique positioning as a LESO and owner of satellites and teleports, a distributor partner of industry-leading satellite solutions and a satellite service provider providing single centralized satellite operations support, SingTel partners can truly leverage SingTel’s full suite of capabilities and infrastructure to provide value-added end-to-end ICT solutions for their maritime customers.

The Partner Summit also saw the inaugural Maritime Competitive Landscape War Room, facilitated by Ms Rachel Yeong, Deputy Director, Marketing & Business Planning, SingTel Satellite. From the feedback received from various partners, the session offered a valuable platform to discuss marketplace insights, align strategies and strengthen partnerships.

Besides these sharing sessions, partners also caught a sneak peek of CrewXchange@SingTel, unveiled at SeaAsia 2011. The one-stop portal aims to link the maritime community of crew and companies by providing a single point of access to news updates, sports, shopping and weather. In addition, partners also attended the Inmarsat FleetBroadband workshop, ‘Beyond Broadband’ conducted by Mr Mohindra Manoj, FleetBroadband Solutions Manager, Inmarsat.

The two-day event was topped off with an annual dinner, where awards were given out to top-performing partners. This year, DeckHouse LLC has been named the winner of the “Best Maritime Partner 2011 Award”, in recognition of their outstanding performance in achieving phenomenal triple-digit growth in FleetBroadband sales.