CASE STUDIES
Cornwall Council
Seven traditional harbours managed by the local authority
Cornwall Council manages harbours across the county, including Truro, Penryn, Penzance, St Ives, Portscatho, Bude and Newquay. Facilities include over 2,000 mainly leisure moorings, commercial bulk cargo and passenger wharves plus facilities for fishing vessels. The Council’s maritime services team also manage public rescue equipment and boatman licensing.
WE LIKE BEST
Single database for all sites
Maintenance scheduling
Bulk orders and invoicing
Mapping feature
Customer communications
WHY HARBOUR ASSIST
In 2009 the county, borough and district councils in Cornwall merged to create Cornwall Council. This brought together ports that had previously been managed independently, all using different systems and processes, with a significant mix of activities and volumes across the estate.
A number of systems were investigated during a rigorous procurement process, with Harbour Assist finally selected over PacSoft and eHarbours. “Harbour Assist was by far the best and the most comprehensive” said Katrina Tonkin, Senior Maritime Assistant for Cornwall Council.
“To have all of the harbours on one system is brilliant”
IMPLEMENTATION & SUPPORT
The procurement process was driven by the clear need for alignment of harbour processes to deliver efficiency and transparency, alongside the invoicing and data security requirements of government. This required some customisation to enable the harbours to raise orders and the Council to issue accurate invoices. “Nick and Graham set-up a bespoke data export process for the Council’s ERP system which works seamlessly” said Katrina Tonkin.
Implementation was straightforward because the procurement process had been so thorough. Cornwall Council had a good understanding of what they wanted the system to do, down to reporting, data export and templates. “My advice is to ensure that the data you import is accurate.” Said Katrina Tonkin, “We spent hours checking, and it was worth it.”
BENEFITS
All of the seven harbours have annual moorings, with Truro and Penzance having wharf facilities for commercial vessels to 80m. “Raising 900 invoices for annual moorings used to take us two weeks” said Katrina Tonkin, “Now it takes just two days”.
Harbour Assist is used for allocating the annual and visitor moorings, commercial vessel berthing and port services orders, as a customer database for all communications, and for managing maintenance of Cornwall Council’s harbour assets. While each of the seven harbours has different priorities, Harbour Assist provides a common platform across the county. “It has given us more control. Everyone is working on the same data on the same system.”
“Harbour Assist has made such a difference to large batch invoice runs”