Driving digital transformation at sea with IoT
Cruise line chief information officers are pursuing internet of things (IoT) solutions at different levels. While the allure of creating a better passenger experience by reducing friction, personalising travel or generating more onboard revenue is appealing, the ability to prove the return on investment has not been as straightforward.
Indications show that passengers love being able to use location technology to enter their stateroom with little effort. Cruise lines like the efficiencies this technology creates when it comes to letting crew members know if they can enter a passenger room for servicing. However, this requires systems that operate in a standalone environment to talk with other systems to deliver specific use cases. This integration of disparate systems may seem to be cost-prohibitive to creating growth opportunities and choosing a path to make these connections work can be complex. However, Wireless Maritime Services (WMS) is driving transformational projects in the maritime industry, and with our partners, we can create environments to connect systems and integration paths to allow cruise lines to implement IoT use cases. WMS has already deployed IoT asset tracking solutions for maritime, connecting people, things and data with a seamless experience that can enable digital transformation initiatives.
Global spending in IoT, business intelligence, artificial intelligence and augmented/virtual reality is forecasted to reach almost reach US$1 trillion in 2019. Cruise lines are betting on digital technology to transform their business by creating better apps, implementing wearable technology or standing up microservices from legacy systems to improve operations. While digital can be viewed by many through their lens of speciality – such as networking, software, applications or business insights – the fact remains that the digital experience is created by a stack of technologies working in harmony to meet a specific use case. For cruise lines, use cases can be summarised into three broad categories: guest and crew experiences, marine operations and safety, and environmental sustainability.
Over the past few years, cruise lines have invested heavily in technologies to improve the guest and crew experience. These include mobile applications before and during cruises, technologies to expedite embarkation such as facial recognition, and onboard location services to allow guests to order food and beverages. These use cases require a full stack of networking, software, applications and business insights to drive user experiences to the ‘transformational’ cruise that passengers are now expecting. To deliver these experiences cruise lines must tackle the challenges of building technologies that are future-proof, or augment legacy systems with new technology to deliver step-change performance. WMS can create cellular, wi-fi, near-field communication (NFC), Bluetooth and other wireless networks to support IoT initiatives, with partners managing devices to provide data and business insights on centralised platforms and drive digital transformation.
Marine operations and safety are two areas of passenger shipping that are ready for digital transformation and automation. One study cites over 75% of maritime accidents are caused by human error, creating an opportunity to automate tasks to minimise incidents. In addition, studies indicate that automation could reduce the high costs associated with crew hours and fuel.
Today, when systems are added they are monitored as a separate entity, rather than as part of a comprehensive digital platform, which may end up as another screen to the engine control room. This may not be very efficient.
