CASE STUDY -
Monson
A digital transformation makes this shipping specialist one of the most advanced in the industry
PLATFORM
BUSINESS APPLICATION
INDUSTRY
MARITIME TRANSPORTATION
The Challenge
Founded in 1981, MONSON is one of Australia’s most experienced global shipping specialists. From humble beginnings in the Port of Fremantle, Western Australia – MONSON now serves all Australian ports from 30+ locations across Australia and Asia.
MONSON’s legacy SaaS-based solution was ageing, unable to scale and a barrier to enabling competitive advantage. MONSON needed an application modernisation overhaul.
Their aim was to build their own end-to-end, in-house shipping agency application from the ground up to replace their current system. By owning the IP instead of leveraging another company’s SaaS product, they would have complete control over the feature set. It also needed to be scalable and allow for rich system integrations and with API connectivity.
“Being custom-made and built on secure modern cloud architecture, a new system would enable MONSON to gain a competitive advantage and expand its customer base and shipping offerings to top-tier commodity traders across the globe” said MONSON CMO, Monique Costantino.
“This would be achievable by being able to easily be configured to the requirements of new clients, ports and ever-changing legislation.”
“We didn’t have the resources within our business to run this project internally, nor did we want to employ any developers full-time per se, so we went to the market looking for a software development specialist to partner with.”
“We narrowed our search to two providers and decided to partner with Kiandra – a decision we are very glad we made.”
The Solution
The solution Kiandra developed is a fully custom-built shipping agency application built on the rich low-code OutSystems platform – or as Monique calls it, “Innovation beyond the port!”
The approach for MONSON was to automate and streamline processes, leverage the security, performance, speed to market and reduced risk of the OutSystems low-code platform, and to apply an intelligent rules engine, automated document generation and a laytime calculator.
The result is the MONSON MB2 application. Whether it’s via their customer portal or engaging with their industry-first API, MB2 is a critical integration for many of its customers and service providers, providing valuable insights into vessels transporting their cargo.
The Outcome
MONSON’s digital transformation makes them one of the most technologically advanced in their industry.
The solution has also enabled MONSON to become a force in servicing customers before, during, and beyond the port.
MB2 incorporates a powerful rules engine as part of its Vessel Port Call Estimator. Due to the clean design and fully configurable back-end, these tariff calculations can now be updated on the fly by admin users instead of programmers, saving time, money and utilising their own resources instead.
With the introduction of MONSON’s long-awaited Multi-Port Estimator within MB2, staff no longer need to create individual vessel estimates in a separate system and the need for Excel Spreadsheets has been removed altogether. MONSON estimate the time saving for its Port Operations staff is approximately two hours per day per user on this task specifically – that potentially equates to 140 hours of productivity per day across all of its sites.
“Congratulations to the Team at Kiandra for their amazing effort and patience in assisting us with this project build.” Monique said.
Shortly after launch, Kiandra received the 2022 OutSystems Innovation Award – recognising its outstanding work in building MONSON's a new end-to-end, in-house shipping agency application.
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