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Carbofin
| Site | Carbofin |
|---|---|
| Industry | Transportation and Logistics |
| Location | Italy |
| Provided by | Redomino |
| Contact | not available |
The Carbofin Group deals with oil tankers and LNG carriers, therefore it needs to coordinate the work of many people operating far away from each other.
Carbofin Group Energia e Trasporti shipping company deals with the management of oil tankers and LNG carriers. In 2003 Carbofin bought Eni's Tanker activities, this is part of the ongoing program of concentration towards the core business and rationalization of the non-core activities of the Italian energy company, assuring the employment preservation as well as the contractual and prescriptive agreement. Carbofin is thus a noteworthy and important group for the Italian economy.
Key Highlights
Choosing Redomino and Plone, Carbofin can now count on:
- An intranet system that provides a unified system for the management of documentation and records, which coordinates the work of all Society members, from top managers to staff that works on ships, with no waste of time and memory and respecting all the proceedings and protocols of the various group activities. Read more...
- A plugin that allows the Carbofin Group to maintain the system for managing orders that the Society is used to employ in years, based on a SyBase database, but now enforced with new technologies; besides, it is possible to sign orders with a virtual and legal proceeding, a digital authentication recognized by the law. Read more...
- A new system for managing faxes that allows the Carbofin staff to send faxes to any part of the world, and from any part of the world, even from a ship located in the middle of the ocean. Read more...
- A special software for managing the Carbofin employers archive (voluminous and extensive): all the documentation is now in digital form and organized in a easy-to-use/consult and searchable sytstem, avoiding the damage, loss, confusion and errors of location of documents and records, typical of a paper system. Read more...
The projects
The customer's needs:
The Carbofin Group needed a dynamic system for coordinating the work of many people, normally operating far away from each other, including the crew of oil tankers or LNG carriers, which can travel for a long period of time.
Besides, the various activities of the Society are regulated by specific proceedings to be respected; what Carbofin needed was a particular control of the content and activity management, of the projects, the e-mails and faxes, the orders and the staff in general.
Solution:
Redomino realized for Carbofin an intranet system based on the CMS Plone, a unified and multifunctional platform with an intuitive and easy-to-use interface. Each member has a user name, a password and a defined role (which can be configured and changed by the system administrators); these roles are associated to certain permissions (the user can view only the content he has the right to access and can do only the operations he has the right to performe).
The system assures a top-level security, both on an internal and external point of view, thanks to a workflow configured by the site managers and a tailor-made structure made of roles and permissions, based on the customer's needs; and thanks to the system protection against the majority of common web application security issues.
A simple and intuitive dashboard leads the user through his work, a navigation menu is always shown on top of the screen, to make it easier moving from a section to another of the platform. The content management becomes a quick and simple task, thanks to:
- The dashboard, a simple and intuitive panel
- Revision, the versioning system for a better content management
- The protocol area, an optimum management of proceedings
- The projects area, improving collaboration and sharing of ideas
- The help area
The dashboard
The dashboard provides tools and essential information for each member's everyday tasks and for the Society internal communication. The dashboard has four different parts: an area for the personal documentation and communication tools, providing all the user's contents, webmail (which can be checked and used from everywhere in the world), drafts of faxes and faxes to be sent; a group area, in which the user can view the groups he is part of and information about their members; a protocol area and a projects area.
Revision
Revision is the versioning system which Redomino staff enforced in Redox. Thanks to this smart system, when a user creates a content, it will be shown as the current element, and every user can view it (if they have the permission to do so); when it has to be modified or updated, a new copy of it will be created, and the user can work on it while the old version is still available for other users; the content is shown has locked while somebody is working on it, avoiding incoherent changes. When the new version is ready it can replace the new one.
The protocol area
As we mentioned before, the Carbofin Group needs to manage different activities, which can require specific and strict proceedings. The various activities are thus managed by a workflow shaped on the customer's particular needs, so that it can manage private information, archives of mails and faxes, projects, orders and other functions, according to a defined hierarchy, which can be configured basing it on each specific case.
The project area
The design of new materials, the planning of new systems of administration, and so on, can be done in a virtual and profitable way thanks to the dynamic system Redomino implemented in Redox: the Groups members can propose the beginning of a new project, sharing all the available documentation and collaborating with other members offering various skills, for a continuos and effective sharing from the beginning to the end of a project. Redox will also manage the hierarchy in each step of the project, always respecting the proceedings that concern important and demanding works.
The help area
Because of the extent of the Carbofin staff and the distance that can separate different workers, it would have been hard to organize a training for all of them with the aim of optimizing the use of Redox. But the platform provides an help in this direction as well, both with its inner easy-to-use system and with an inline guide, accessible from a simple button in the navigation bar: the help area is a brief and clear guide about functioning and the proceedings used by Redox, so that the user can always count on an help in each task he has to performe.
The customer's needs:
For managing orders, the Carbofin staff used in years a management software based on the SyBase database; changing this protocol would have meant a big cost, above all in terms of human resources. Therefore, it has been necessary to improve the centralization and the management of information, to provide a better communication and a better collaborative work among the staff members.
Besides, a lasting problem was the validation of orders: an order can be edited on a ship, it can be urgent, but it has to be signed to be operative, what if the person who has the power to confirm the order is far away from the place where the order was born?
Solution:
Redomino realized for Carbofin a plugin for connecting the SyBase database to the Redox platform, in order to allow the management of orders with the help of this flexible and smart system.
Thanks to the module called Resign, the Society can now sign orders in a digital way, through a proceeding which provides a digital autentication recognized by the law. Through a personal Smart Card, a user can digitally sign documents, the system generates a P7M file; the packed file with the document and the certification of digital signature is managed by a scheduled server, so that all orders and documents are updated in the database and shown on Redox. Now the orders on the platform show a new icon, which adresses to the P7M file, all information are automatically updated.
The system for managing orders that the Society was used to employ is not changed, but it now works side by side with a new technology, which provides a smart content management; thanks to Resign, orders can be signed in time, when they are needed, even if they come from far away.
The customer's needs:
Communication is a key element for a Society that needs to coordinate many staff members' functions and activities. And it is also very important to send offical documentation. But this can be hard if the documents are on a ship, for example, and have to be sent somewhere else.
Ships are usually connected to the rest of the world through an on demand satellite connection, it is thus essential to optimize time and proceedings.
Solution:
The module called Fax that Redomino realized for Carbofin allows the group to send digital faxes: through the menu in Redox, the user can access to a cover, composed by a form to be filled in; as the sender is already configured, all the user has to do is to insert the adressee (with the help of the online adress book in Redox) and to attach the document to be sent; just one more click and the user can send the fax. In the background, an OpenOffice server-side installation turns the files the user sent into a single PDF file and sends it to the HylaFax fax server, the leading open source fax server for Unix-like computer systems, which uses a client-server design and supports the sending and receiving of faxes as well as text pages, on any scale from low to very high volumes.
Every user's personal email account is managed by LotusNotes, a client-server, collaborative application developed and sold by IBM Software Group. Users can manage directily on Redox incoming and outbound emails, drafts and archives, in order to have communication tools always available on the platform the staff members use to work.
The customer's needs:
The Carbofin Group bought Eni's Tanker activities, a copious staff thus passed from the big Italian company to the new Society. A consistent amount of documents and papers are associated to each member, like a copy of the ID, varoius certificates, contracts and agreements, and so on. It's easy to think about how all this can become a problem: a huge paper archive, hard to manage.
The first step to solve this problem was to convert each document in a 1x1cm microfilm, incorporated into a jacket. But microfilms, as well as paper, can cause problems: they are hard to manage and deteriorate with the passing of time, you need a special monitor to view them and it's easy to placing them in the wrong position.
Solution:
Redomino solved Carbofin's problem optimizing space and management of the documents: through an external service, each micorfilm was computerized and converted in a high resolution TIF image file and in a JPEG image file, suitable for consultation. Now the material does not quickly deteriorate and it is very easy to backup all information on a dvd.
But Redomino also provided a powerful software for the management of all this material: through an easy-to-use interface the operators can access the documentation, all information is indexable and you do not run the risk of collocating documents in the wrong place, or of losing material.
Besides, searching documents into the archive is no more a slow and hard task, due to the amount of information to be managed: Redomino realized a special protocol for searching inside the archive, a feature powered by a particular system based on separated catalogues tahat makes researches faster and accurate.
Finally, the archive management is complitely independent, even the introduction of new materials; Carbofin staff members use the system with no aid of external providers.