In Colombia, Tripanko implementation is moving forward steadily in preparation to go live in the next few months. Joao Paulo Marins, SAAM Towage’s Country Manager in that country, comments on his teams’ experience with the project. “At first the personnel involved thought the new systems would be manual and would mean more work for them. However, once they were familiar with the programs, they saw how user-friendly they were and that they would save time and make their work easier. Our gradual change management process has helped and today, I would venture to say, the team is excited, open to change and eager to forge on with these developments. I like the phrase coined by one of our dispatchers to summarize the team’s sentiment: “Tripanko is the lighthouse that guides SAAM Towage Colombia.”

The finishing touches are being worked out in Colombia. “With Helm we are completing the challenge of interfacing with our ERP. We are also wrapping up work on the facility housing the Information and Operations Center (CIOPS in Spanish), moving forward with dispatcher training, user manuals and in the next few weeks we will train our captains and then hope to go live in May,” explains Joao.

As for NS, he says that it is on schedule and upload has been completed. “Some inventory is still pending, as well as the challenge of interfacing with the ERP. Once that is done, we will conduct training and desk checking before going live,” the Country Manager concludes.