Challenges of maritime data: Interview with Shipfix's Serge Alleyne

In December 2023, Veson Nautical acquired Shipfix , the leading collaborative workflow and data platform for the maritime and trade sectors. We sat down with Serge Alleyne , Co-CEO and Co-founder of Shipfix, to discuss the challenges of maritime data and his advice to companies considering building solutions internally or partnering with expert third parties.

Q: Hi Serge, it’s great to speak with you today. Many of our clients are keen to learn more about Shipfix and you as one of the founders. Tell us more about yourself and how you and your Co-CEO and Co-Founder, Antoine Grisay , created Shipfix?

I’ve been very lucky to have worked across many industries. I was not born and raised in shipping, and I come from a tech and pure software engineering background. I met Antoine when I was living in London, working with tech startups through an entrepreneur incubator. He introduced me to his project called Shipfix, designed to bring intelligence and structure to complicated email workflows for shipowners.

It was an interesting case, and I enjoyed working with Antoine, so we wanted to move the project forward with a strong foundation together as a stand-alone business. Antoine and I established Shipfix in 2018, with a 50-50 split.

As neither of us were born and raised in shipping we began working with our first shipowner client to understand the industry and build up our comprehension of the market. They gave us 2 or 3 million emails to let us see how people were communicating and trading. We started crunching the numbers, extracting, and bringing structure to the data. Our focus was to establish more knowledge of market supply and demand metrics, without users needing to read their outlook and drowning in emails.

It was an amazing challenge; I couldn’t really believe it. I had never seen anything like it in other industries. The magnitude and the volume of data brought such an intellectual challenge. We had to push technology to the edge of what it is today, coming up with new mechanisms to unblock issues of scale, to provide the necessary level of security and to handle the volume of emails.

Q: How quickly were you able to build and grow Shipfix?

As soon as we started Shipfix, we rapidly brought in a founding team of three amazing people with complementary skills, and who I have worked with for 15 years. This core team acted like a magnet for other A players, as they were so experienced and well connected in that sphere, and Shipfix rapidly grew.

When working quickly as a startup, we created a philosophy for hiring and retaining our staff. We focused on harmony, free communication and transparency. Our aim was to reduce any communication blockers, focus on quality outcomes and a core belief that our employees should be happy at work and in their home lives. This led to us having a very low churn, with an exceptionally high loyalty rate, which allowed us to focus on quickly developing our robust and accurate technology and tools.

The challenges of the project also nurtured our group as a technical and engineering team. It’s quite unknown and rare to have this volume of data, so it was a key driver for people to join the venture: its untapped business and strategic opportunity, but also from a product and technical perspective.

Q: Now that Shipfix is part of Veson’s solutions, what’s next?

I’m more conscious of, and focused on, what our clients need. This means we will be using technology and tools that naturally help us to achieve this, so we will find what is best to serve the clients’ interests. While we have used AI at Shipfix, this is one tool at our disposal to express and honor, in a functional way, what the customer requires. We have immediate and high value synergies being part of Veson, by natively implementing and embedding Q88, VesselsValue and Oceanbolt data and analytics within the Shipfix platform and UX. We are also very excited about the native workflows and syncs between the Shipfix and IMOS platform to bring instant and contextualized updates within our client mission-critical workflows and daily operations.

I can see that we will have to develop more advanced products that continue to handle the magnitude of data with greater accuracy. And it’s all down to accuracy: our clients need to rely on a robust system which can minimize the bad quality data. AI can help reach the highest standards of accuracy, building a central nectar of data they can rely on. This will save hours when doing business, potentially allowing their teams to focus on improving trades, and for certain teams or departments, being able to do this almost without reading their emails. There is this ultimate vision from us at Shipfix and Veson, to see the trades in the best way possible, so clients can focus on something meaningful, like their relationship within the industry.

This is a long journey, the technology is still evolving, and we need human and client eyes to provide feedback, report errors and guide how the solutions will develop. We want to bring meaningful products, with outstanding user experience (UX). I’m really dedicated to UX. I love properly designed tools in my daily life, like an iPhone. It’s so well designed and thought out, it’s the way it touches, this haptic pleasure. I believe we can all embrace technology in an everyday setting to get more out of our lives.

Q: Many companies want to improve operational efficiency and need to evaluate the benefits of working with external partners or building something themselves. What advice would you give these companies?

I don’t see the value of trying to do what others are already doing very well. Take Shipfix as an example of an expert communication platform for shipping. A client can experiment and go through the journey of understanding their difficulties to bring better communication tools into their daily operations, but the requirements of time, resources, and money to focus on your core business of shipping is already so big. By dividing your allocation of energy and turning away from your main business areas and assets, it dilutes your power to advance in your field.

When we first started taking Shipfix to market, we spoke to many companies where they believed they could develop, incubate, and test large scale technologies. However, it has changed very significantly over the last 3 to 5 years. Those people noticed the failure of not delegating, not outsourcing and their core business had less focus. My advice for clients is to work through a change management process away from a more traditional way of thinking about growth. From a pure business perspective, technology companies have developed a business model to reach affordable pricing and economies of scale. Therefore, it is much more economical to externalize this resource.

Companies that realize this early on can rely on robust partners and platforms like Veson’s IMOS and Shipfix. By delegating, they can nurture the relationship with a partner and can invest indirectly in the technology growth across our industry for all. This is a win win strategy. We are very excited to be a part of Veson, where we can continue building Shipfix together with the IMOS platform, and work towards a connected maritime future.

Interested in finding out more about the Shipfix-IMOS connection, and the benefits for users today? Register for our upcoming webinar “Shipfix + IMOS: Bring informational immediacy and completeness to your decision-making process” to see our first set of native IMOS workflows.