bluebook: A startup for digital solutions in Shipping

The “bluebook” is the natural continuation of a lengthy collaboration  between a developer -George Papakitsou- and a former analyst and current product owner -Thanasis Pagonis-. George has many years of experience in web technologies, and Thanasis has gone through a variety of technical and management roles in audiovisual production, market analysis, telecommunications and shipping.

“After we started collaborating in 2015 and experiencing daily gaps in the information management of technical ship management companies, the idea of ​​more efficient products and services soon became a reality.

Although our first implementations were purely technical solutions to address weaknesses in digital tools that are well established in the sector we soon realized that the source of problems is not only technical in nature. At the risk of diminishing the importance of some technical factor – and there are many! – we would say that the biggest gap we see in the market is related to the lack of expectations. Numerous shipping professionals, both on land and at sea, have never really grown into the digital business tools they use every day. The gap between the level of technology in the retail world (i.e. computers, smart devices, interconnected services, etc.) and the digital reality of seafaring is huge!”

“Our vision is to cultivate an ecosystem of shipping products & services, the use of which maximizes the expectations of professionals in the field. Our absolute priority is to make the digital world part of the professional life of seafarers & workers on land easier and to increase the return on shipowners’ investments. We consider the value of our product passes through and is defined by the end user and so, for us, the design priority is the one which makes the most clicks during the day, the captain, the first engineer, the office clerk and so on. We are interested in the documentation of a tangible ROI not only at the investment level, but also in the daily digital work that is conducted at all levels of a ship management technical company “.

“A very key element that differentiates us from the competition, is the mentality of openness and interoperability in relation to our digital environment. For decades, most shipping HSQE software vendors have completely abolished the concept of interoperability and offered absolutely no possibility of universal integration with other systems & services via APIs. This isolates them and makes it very difficult (time consuming and expensive) to connect to any other tool the shipping company wants – or is forced by its customers – to use. In addition, our approach concerns a number of microservices that work harmoniously with each other, so that the final product is by-design structurally malleable and therefore compatible with the constant developments and changes defined by international regulations and internal procedures for each company .

We joined ACEin during the quarantine and despite the unprecedented nature of this situation, we have managed to participate in the incubator online activities and to get in touch with many “fellow travelers” in startup entrepreneurship. ACEin has helped us speed up processing our business plan, both through its contacts & its members’ network, as well as in the exchange of know how & best practices for a variety of issues related to sustainable business development.