Shaping the Future of Terminal Operations Technology

30 years ago, terminal operating systems analyzed operations from a 10,000-foot view, with little understanding of what actually happened in the terminal day-to-day. Vague and unhelpful data permeated spreadsheets and Operations meetings, forcing terminals to over-rely on talented, experienced managers to dictate allocations and planning based on educated guesses and “sticking to a game plan.”

From the transition to digital from paper processes all the way to the modern terminal operating system (TOS) with graphical capabilities and optimization automation, TOS functionality has made leaps and bounds. Today, TOS offerings allow terminal operators to analyze what is happening on-terminal day-to-day, minute-to-minute, and make swift data-backed decision-making possible.

Tideworks has seen the industry grow immensely over the past 30 years. Some of the areas that Tideworks has had a hand in shaping include:

Features that improve the safety and sustainability of operations that improve efficiency
Operational efficiency through information or advanced planning
Workplace optimizations that allow increases in terminal density with fewer consequences
Features readymade for the future of terminal operations, including automation technology and more

Tideworks is proud to say we’ve helped pioneer the path forward for terminal operations efficiency, but we also know the work isn’t over. Customers are demanding more control, visibility, and flexibility than ever before. TOS providers have the opportunity to influence the power of advanced technology as it continues to revolutionize global logistics.

The growth in software in a continually evolving industry is a complex dance. If not managed properly, that complexity can lead downstream to the reduced empowerment of customers. This is a huge problem because our core directive as a TOS provider is to build software products that embrace the dynamism of our domain and empower customers with the ability to adapt quickly to the fast-changing ecosystem.

READ ON: The Current State of Marine Port Automation

Given this, an important question emerges: What can we do to make our software and our business more adaptable

When a TOS provider can adapt quickly to their customers’ changing needs, they’re empowered with control. Flipping that on its head, when a TOS provider is slow to respond, terminal operators are at the mercy of their providers. To empower you in the current market, your TOS must be adaptable; it must be built in a way that the TOS provider can be responsive.

Power to the Customer

The final factor of empowerment is choice. Over the past decade, consolidation amongst certain providers has occurred. This led to few providers aggregating multiple terminal systems into a single suite of products. It directly impacted consumers because there are far fewer choices now than ever before.

This begs the question: is this really in a terminal operator’s best interest? It's certainly not.

To be clear, this doesn't mean that vendor partnerships are bad. It just means partnerships should lead to added value for you and it should not prevent choice over time. Tideworks believes that taking away from the operator's ability to choose is the opposite of empowering them to succeed. Next-generation TOS solutions should be positioned for standard integration and should provide an increase in choice when it comes to system selection.

Turning Customer Support into Client Services

Walking around the offices of any TOS provider, you must see incredibly knowledgeable subject-matter experts. This is no secret. To provide the best partnership and support to customers, there must also be increased collaboration and shared knowledge between all facets of the organization.

It’s no longer enough for customers to rely solely on a TOS provider's software expertise to build trust. Customers today demand TOS providers make their breadth of industry and operational expertise easily accessible to anyone in their terminal. They also require innovative solutions to keep up with the challenges present in the current terminal landscape, including volume volatility, increased competition, and more. It’s impossible to do both without a sea-change in the way TOS providers communicate internally and externally to customers.

Integrated Support Teams

Tideworks has pioneered a new approach to customer support and success by introducing a fully integrated Client Services department. Teams of service representatives, product engineers, and client management professionals are all at a customer’s disposal with one ticket, email, or phone call.

Our commitment to bringing the vast expertise across our teams into dedicated support units ensures that any challenges occurring in your terminal are quickly resolved.

Onboarding and Training

A successful client relationship starts at the very beginning. Customers who are onboarded with thought and care submit fewer support tickets, leverage the system in more effective ways, and get enthusiastic buy-in from their staff sooner.

For these reasons, a central tenet of the development of Client Services revolved around training and onboarding new customers and users in more comprehensive ways.

Tideworks now offers three distinct methods for onboarding and training, including:

In-person- Classic, boots-on-the-ground approach to onboarding wherein Tideworks Client Services Engineers will conduct setup and training in your terminal over the course of 2-3 days.
Virtual onboarding - Virtual onboarding has repeatedly been shown to be on par with in-person onboarding in terms of quality and relationship-building. One of the benefits of virtual onboarding is less disruption for terminal staff as the sessions are spread out into more digestible segments and have a smaller price tag than in-person training.
Tideworks University - New to the Tideworks sphere of educational resources, Tideworks University will act as a user’s central repository to answer common questions about their products and train new users on different functionalities of their TOS.

What Your Next TOS Should Do

To recap, next-generation TOSs will need to do three primary things to meet customer demand:

First, it needs to have the core features and functionality that customers need to run their facilities.
Secondly, it needs to empower customers beyond those features and functionalities. This can be done by performing a radical shift in how terminal operating systems are built.
Lastly, offer robust training and support resources so that no matter what support a customer needs, they’ll be able to get resolutions in a timely manner

Cutting Complexity with Modern Software Architecture

In order for the future of terminal operations technology to thrive, customers demand that their provider remains in lockstep with them as they grow and scale their needs. Fortunately, this is where modern software architecture generation and terminal operating systems distribute the complexity of big monolithic applications into smaller services. This phenomenon is called microservices and each of these microservices specializes in performing a function.

Picture drawing a circle around the business functions that a task needs to perform, like “inventory” or “date” and turn those into discrete services. Contracts, called application programming interfaces (APIs), can be created between those services. APIs allow those services to communicate and enable products to invoke the service’s behaviors.

Benefits of Cloud-Based Platforms

In this approach to microservices, each service is fully independent. It's deployed independently and perfectly scalable. As the system grows, more services can be added with less impact to the overall system. This reduces the time it takes to train new engineers to learn the complexity of products and how they map together. This consequently affords the reusability of business logic, thus reducing overlap between products.

The approach also improves security by reducing the threat surface by centralizing access to specific points. It's more amenable to customization and configuration and simplifies integration with third parties. This directly results in more and higher quality data being generated.

Although the benefits of microservices are exciting, how does this relate to TOS products?

The beauty in microservices lies in their interconnectedness. Microservices, over time, start to comprise the platform on top of which all products are built. This ensures products are laser-focused on providing a quality user experience.

Tideworks Is Built to Empower Users and Drive Operational Efficiency

When Tideworks builds software, it’s built with the framework to empower users to make calculated choices and operate more efficiently. With this framework, Tideworks allows users to solve problems independently and remove their reliance on Tideworks support.

Tideworks has taken significant strides in providing users with added features relevant to their terminals. Some of the improvements include:

Lead time improvements

Lead time improvements

Tideworks made dramatic improvements in our lead time. This directly improves the speed with which new solutions are deployed and made ready for use by customers.

Test automation

Test automation

Using test automation, Tidworks ensures that every existing feature in current applications works after every code change. This improves the quality for customers after every release.

Flexibility

Flexibility

Tideworks is now more flexible with your requests. As you face different industry pressures and become more adaptable to incorporating new features, Tideworks can offer more timely and effective support, debug issues more quickly, and lengthen software longevity.

Higher quality data

Higher quality data

Tideworks can generate better and more granular data for analytics, which can help you improve operational decision making. Tideworks can now scale to handle larger loads and multiple terminals more efficiently and this directly reduces expenses for customers with economies of scale.

Terminal automation

Terminal automation

Tideworks can simplify terminal automation for customers. This helps reduce integration complexity and improves support for different operating modes.

Security

Security

Tideworks can adapt more quickly and adopt the best in class security standards. This can be done in addition to offering integrations not only on the terminal but into the supply chain. This helps customers be more economical all around.

Cloud-Enabled Solutions

So, what's the next evolutionary step for terminal operating systems? TOSs need to transform and better adapt to the changing dynamics that customers face today and into the future.

Tideworks is investing in quality, reliability, responsiveness, scalability, capable deployments and all the benefits that those will bring for customers.

By investing in the collective future, Tideworks customers can make the choice on how to deploy their software including migrating to the cloud. Mainsail 10, Tideworks’ next generation TOS for marine terminal operators, can leverage cloud capabilities allowing terminal operators to have scalable reporting and inventory management without additional hardware.

READ ON: Mainsail 10 Launch & Go-Live at MIT

Mainsail 10 is both familiar and extraordinary. The Tideworks team, working with huge amounts of input from many of our current customers, developed a clean, consistent and highly efficient user experience. In building Mainsail 10, Tideworks aligned with the principles of configurability, quality supportability and consistency. Following in the tradition of Mainsail Vanguard and Mainsail Classic, it's incredibly configured.

WATCH: The Game-Changing Features of Mainsail 10

Tideworks Intermodal PRO (IPRO) TOS for rail terminal operators, also leverages cloud capabilities. The IPRO Core TOS subscription is a standardized, cloud-based TOS with the essential functionality and features from IPRO and Traffic Control. It provides rail terminal operators with a software platform that is scalable and easily deployable.

READ ON: How Can Terminal Operators Benefit from the Core Intermodal TOS Subscription

Data Transparency

As TOS products adapt over time to be more agile and scalable, the need for accurate and real-time data collection becomes more critical. Data is the glue binding all Tideworks products and services together. It should be viewed as a commodity to be monetized and analyzed to drive efficiency and change on-terminal.

WATCH: Data-Driven Decision Making Webinar- A Virtuous Cycle of Innovation

Our next iteration of Tideworks Insight drives decision-making and provides greater transparency. Like the rest of our solutions, Tideworks Insight has been built for scalability, multi-tenancy, responsiveness, and reliability, enabling terminal operators to take control of their data and turn it into actionable insights. Data transparency also allows for more data governance and standardization which can significantly optimize operations.

As a trustworthy data analytics platform, Tideworks Insight is capable of not only aggregating TOS data but also integrating with other terminal systems and machine learning tools. This helps customers build a fast, scalable, reliable, and resilient interface enterprise data platform.

Industry Partnerships

Your next TOS provider should not only provide innovative solutions to allow for better visibility into your operations. They should also be aware of the gaps that are left between their offerings and those that specialize in niche areas of logistics. A willingness to partner and seamlessly integrate with other service providers to ensure you receive a comprehensive technology solution is the mark of a trustworthy modern TOS provider.

Advent eModal & Tideworks

Tideworks is devoted to bringing marine and intermodal terminal solutions that derive the most value possible from available resources. Our products optimize yard management, move planning, labor and resource allocation, and track a growing number of automated processes to increase your operational efficiencies and productivity.

We help terminals from the inside out. Advent eModal takes the opposite approach, aiding terminals from the outside in. They improve relationships between external carriers and terminals, helping to speed cargo in and out of the terminal complex. They bolster terminal security, which benefits terminal operators and their customers. And they enhance cargo visibility for increased transparency and even greater planning capabilities.

Tideworks delivers world-class TOS solutions. Advent eModal better connects terminals to the greater logistics ecosystem. Together, they provide unmatched service to an expanding, shared customer pool. Terminals that avail themselves of both company’s offerings will be well-positioned to satisfy customer demands and take advantage of future opportunities.

Read on: Advent eModal and Tideworks: A Partnership for Unmatched Cargo Visibility

Microservices for a Macro Solution

As a software technology company, our software investments bring us together, but it's our investments into human relationships that keep us together. Under Tideworks' leadership, the criticality of our relationships with our customers has been reinforced and re-envisioned with the creation of a Client Services department.

Tideworks fully recognizes that empowering customers with better software will not be enough, there is a need to engage and partner at a deeper level to achieve our target.

The terminal industry is changing. Technologies are changing. Both Tideworks and its customers need to choose whether they will adapt and pioneer the future or be left behind.

Tideworks has made its choice.

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