On a mid-sized passenger ship, the volume of purchases of Food, Beverage, Consumables and Equipment items amounts to several million Euro per year. In the long run the risk of loosing money through lack of control and non-availability of information on consumption, stock levels or prices is simply too high.

To succeed in an increasingly competitive market, Cruise ship operators are forced to save on costs, reduce waste and tightly control usage - sometimes down to the piece of a napkin. The return on investment of an advanced inventory control system is between 3 and 6 months and definitely measurable.

We have developed a solution matching the requirements of a ships operator or caterer for a single ship up to a fleet of cruise vessels:

• The Hotel Inventory module is for use onboard the vessels. All functionality a cruise ship needs to manage the hotel inventory in an efficient, time- and cost saving manner is available within this program.

• The Corporate Purchasing module is for use in the purchasing department ashore. All procurement functions from maintaining a standard item list to tracking accounts payable are supported by this software.
  

Both modules are communicating through built-in interfaces. The data exchange is two-way. Corporate Purchasing sends standard item list updates and supplier database updates to the vessel's Inventory system. The vessel sends purchase requests, loading variances and daily cost reports, as well as "snapshots" of stock data at certain user-defined moments (e.g. at cruise end). Interfacing does not require high-bandwidth satellite lines. The basic requirement is Email connectivity, something that every passenger ship should  have these days.