Navigation technology company GNS has announced plans to sell all digital and paper nautical charts and publications at cost price as part of its Voyager Navigation as a Service (VNaaS) package, with customers paying the annual software licence fee to be provided with all ENCs and related publications they use for navigation at zero margin.
VNaaS offers a set of software and data analytics tools that manages the charts and publications ordering process for each voyage. All the ENCs, paper charts and publications purchased using the system will be provided by GNS at cost price, which GNS says will create a shared incentive to reduce unnecessary spending and drive down the overall cost of navigation.
“At GNS, we have always seen our relationship with our customers as a long-term partnership and our new Voyager NaaS service is a natural next step,” said GNS CEO Paul Stanley.
“It gives customers complete transparency about the price they are paying, the data analytics required to identify exactly the products their vessels need and the perfect set of software tools required to sail with those products in the safest and most operationally efficient way possible.”
Previous research conducted by GNS has shown that many shipping companies are overspending on charts and publications, often by a significant amount, by not restricting purchasing to the charts and publications that are actually required for a passage.
Whilst manual processes to check orders against planned routes can be helpful in reducing overspend, they do not prove as effective as hard data, the company says – an issue which VNaaS has been designed to tackle.
