“In this day and age it's becoming harder to stay ahead of the
game when it comes to compliance and keeping legal. It’s really
all about keeping ahead of the game and keeping the overheads as
small as possible and not just fire fighting all the time, ” thus
reveals Simon Benson, Environmental, Safety & Security Manager,
NYK Group Europe Ltd, on the challenges that occupy his working
day.
NYK is a global company whose history dates back to the 19th
century and is best known for its global logistics business and
activities in other multiple industries, predominantly shipping.
Simon Benson’s role heavily involves him in environmental issues,
security, disaster recovery and health and safety, all areas in
which there is a huge compliance component. The size of the company
only makes the task of compliance even harder.
Incidents such as the Buncefield fire and the London bombings
have made a lot people in charge of assets wonder about their
companies’ strategy for dealing with incidents, whether operations
could survive such a hit and whether there is a legal requirement
for them to do so. Benson believes that such things have certainly
sharpened the minds of boards of directors when it comes to gaining
justification for implementing business continuity and other IT
protection.
A so called “lights out” event could lead to NYK being unable to
make payments that will affect the chartering of vessels
potentially incurring six figure losses for NYK within a week. In
addition, Benson is trying to keep ahead of the strict compliance
regulations land-based operations. Thus it has been essential for
NYK to have technology that was robust and secure enough to
guarantee meeting compliance regulations.
Benson remembers the journey that started just over two and a half
years ago when he moved into what was a new position. “I identified
very quickly that there was a hell of a lot of paperwork and it was
very hard with all of the [22] sites in Europe [to cover]. It was
hard to see what was going on and to manage what was going on
because there was no visibility of what was happening unless you
went to [one of the sites]. And even then it was difficult because
you sometimes didn’t get totally accurate information.
"It became clear to me very quickly that we needed to have some
sort of technology solution to assist us in doing this job and as
there was nothing there to assist us before, we were starting from
a green field and working our way up. That’s how we came to the
conclusion that we needed some sort of solution. All we were using
before was email, paper files and a file server which didn’t help
very much because we didn’t have common file services across the
whole of Europe.”
In assessing what types of system to deploy, Benson was adamant
that the process would be business-driven rather than based solely
round the technology. He made use of NYK’s in-house IT company for
whom he used to work, which helped in the process of assessing what
solution to deploy, showing how the solution could meet business
needs and satisfy what the company wanted. The scope was broadened
to look at solutions that met not just current compliance issues,
but also to look at solutions that could cope with future
issues.
Benson knew that the whole issue of compliance was going to get
even more significant and that new situations would come along all
the time and he tried as much as he could to future proof what the
company would be investing in. After an initial investigation, he
came back with a list of about 15 different products that could
meet part or some of the requirements that NYK had put together,
following a typical IT project model with a business driver. NYK
then whittled this to a short list based on a matrix of ratings
based on the key requirements.
From there NYK instigated a series of trials and reviews which
brought things down to a list of three solutions, one of which was
a complete bespoke solution and provided an interesting contrast
with the other two off-the-shelf packages. Benson feels that the
company did explore all avenues available to them.
He says, “we really went into quite a lot of detail to
understand how best [the solutions] could meet the requirements we
had [at the time] but also how potentially how they could be used
to invest in the future for us. And from that we went down into
what was the best all-round and most cost-effective system for the
present and the future.
It wasn’t just based on the product [specifications] but also on
assessing the company behind it, the support, the help desk, the
upgrades, the feedback from users, the forums; everything, and not
just what was before our eyes.” This latter statement reveals a
thorough attitude to solution selection and explains why NYK
rejected the idea of holding a beauty contest for solution
providers to show off the best features of their systems.
For NYK, and Benson in particular, getting a compliance system
was far more important than to do something like this. After
following such rigorous criteria, NYK decided upon the Achiever
Plus Integrated Compliance Management Solution from Achiever
Business Solutions in June, 2005.
The product is designed to overcome what its authors say are the
three weaknesses of manually supported controls management by
offering consistency, efficiency and accountability. Basically, the
decision came down to NYK communicating to Achiever exactly what it
wanted to do while explaining the complex nature of the
organisational structure.
They also wanted to see and how Achiever could accommodate that
and what flexibility the organisation could get from Achiever’s
technology. Also important, given that the system was to be rolled
out over so many sites in so many territories, was the fact of how
easy the system was to use and how easy training would be.
Says Benson, “The user interface had to be very friendly and
[work] without a massive training exercise as didn’t want to do
that [on top of the deployment]. [Achiever staff] came in, they
listened to what we wanted; they were able to give us a good
working example of what we wanted; they understood where we were
coming from, what we were doing; they came up with good examples of
what-if scenarios. But it was also, and what really solid it to us,
the support behind [the product].”
The initial purchase involved 500 licence users across Europe
running on the IBM Domino platform which NYK was running already
for its Lotus Notes mail and other such applications. NYK put
together groups of key users and identified who needed what key
modules of the software.
Benson realised that until such people were producing content
there was no point in rolling out the software to everybody.
Achiever assisted on advising, when needed, in what way to use the
system but Benson realised that the only way the company would be
totally conversant with it would be from real life use. Various
departments within NYK spent much of 2006 populating the Achiever
Plus system with data, and Benson believes that it was not unat the
end of the year that the company began to use the system in real
anger.
However, in terms of results, Benson feels that NYK obtained
benefits from a really early stage. The company’s staff, and he
tested this personally, were able to easily pull out information
from the system no matter where they were located; a huge advantage
compared with the paper-based procedures. The added benefit was
that that management, such as Benson, were able to look at
documents no matter where they were located.
The results were clear, remembers Benson. “Timescales for
achieving targets have been reduced and [there is now] transparency
of information. It’s benefited a lot of the team as we have
connected each of the [sites who] don’t get to see their colleagues
in other countries. By having a system in place, they can see and
share information so much quicker so that between them they feel
much more of a community than they ever did.”
Creating such communities were part of Benson’s rationale for
implementing a system such as Achiever Plus and Benson is adamant
that the way in which information is shared and the speed in which
it can be extracted from the system have been the principal
benefits of using the software. There have also been some things
that have far exceeded expectation such as the ability to get
reports corrective actions and status, and actions plans for each
site. These can all be achieved with the click of a button rather
than from days of collating data.
“We can be a lot more proactive. I expected to get some
reporting quicker but I didn’t expect it to be so quick,” Benson
asserts. That said there have been some challenges though. These
include trying to educate the older generation of the workforce,
used to working in a certain way, into using the new technology.
Although Benson wished that the company had tried to roll out the
system a bit quicker.
The future seems to be working out as planned also. NYK has
entered into an expansion plan with Achiever to expand the network
from 500 users to 2500 users across Europe. This is taking the
form of a portal that will act as a gateway embedded into existing
intranets without disrupting working practices.
The portal will unify all of the disparate systems, standards,
polices, applications and resources. Benson believes that this
solution is attracting attention from the regions in the US and
also Japan who can see the potential that the portal is
offering.
Ultimately for NYK, Achiever Plus has been the right product at
the right time and in summing up Benson states that it’s just as
well that the system was installed when it was. “If we [had
implemented the solutions] earlier we wouldn’t have known what we
needed to do with it. We probably would have chosen the wrong
solution. We had to understand ourselves before we understood what
we needed.”