CRM can play a very major role in terms of providing valuable information to the sales team and operations team to make sure enquiries and also customer support is managed properly and efficiently.
Most of the offshore marine companies target specific Region.
They put their human resources to make sure the new enquiries are tapped and converted into opportunity. Enquiries comes from various sources like Brokers, Local partners or directly from the end user/customer. Typical sales cycle can range from 6 months to 1 year depending the area of operation and demand in that area of operation.
The marine offshore companies typical operate various Fleet in different classes.
Depending open the area of operation and specialization, these offshore companies will have own Fleet in specific classes/categories. Sometimes, vessels are outsourced from 3rd party if they don’t have fleet to fulfil the end user requirement.
CRM is designed in such a way that the Fleet specification like speed, area of operation and other important information are captured.This information is retrieved when the cost sheet is prepared. As part of the opportunity, various calculations are performed to arrive at opportunity value. These calculation is called “Cost sheet”. As part of cost sheet generation, information like Insurance cost, Crewing cost, Mobilization cost are taken into consideration before arriving at Net opportunity value.
CRM also provides option of attaching Proposal as part of opportunity management. The CRM provides versioning for these document that are attached.
Once the opportunity is won, Contract are generated. In the marine industry, there are two important factors are considered.
The information entered as part of the opportunities are carried forward on the Contract Level. The contract can be further divided into sub-contract for various duration.
1. Fixed duration of Service
2. Optional duration of Service
Fixed duration wherein the end client will commit to use the vessel for the offshore operations, whereas optional duration of service, where the end-user might extend the period of contract. Based on these dates, the contract can either be on “Spot” or “period” type of contract. Typically, “Spot” is the one the fixed duration is less than 30 Days.
Operational Reports
The other important feature is that CRM can provide Operational reports. These reports provide insights on overall performance of the Vessels and how the revenue is generated. The reports can be generated based on the Enquiries, Opportunities and also post fix data. These reports will help the sales team to plan their activities so that they can further optimize the vessel and tap the opportunities that come in.
