From Data to Decisions: How Ocean Data Dashboards Enhance Performance
Robert McLaggan,
Director of Data | OTG
As the maritime industry increasingly depends on digital solutions, transformation has been driven by the need for data.
For managers, the ability to harness insights from their fleet is the key to executing safer operations, enhancing performance, and unlocking growth. However, extracting actionable insights from siloed systems remains a challenge.
Ocean Technologies Group (OTG) is addressing this problem with a suite of data-driven solutions designed to empower decision-makers with real-time insights, starting with our new Ocean Learning Dashboards.
In this blog, we chat with our Director of Data, Robert McLaggan, to understand the challenges and opportunities inherent in becoming data-driven.
The Hunger for Data in Maritime
Data is transforming industries across the globe, and maritime is no exception. Companies require accurate insights from their vessels to ensure efficiency and safety of their crews, by identifying risks and critical gaps, testing innovations and making key decisions.
However, the seaborne environment brings unique obstacles: the high volumes of data generated from each vessel, and its siloed structure, along with the difficult task of accessing it from ashore. Without accessible analytics, ship managers are often left without appropriate visibility of what is happening on board their vessels.
“The problems are around the fact that things are fragmented around a huge number of different systems and data sources like ship sensors, satellite systems, port databases and weather reports,” explains Robert. “Critically, learning and assessment data is often disconnected from crewing data, making it difficult to get a comprehensive of performance.”
The result? A significant delay in decision-making. Without timely, accessible insights, managers can be left reacting to issues rather than proactively addressing them.
Fragmented Systems and Restricted Access
The fragmented nature of maritime data constitutes one of the biggest challenges for its operators, making extracting concise information a complicated process.
“There’s a huge amount of effort involved in making sure that you get a coherent story around a vessel’s performance, its crew, and the risks associated with its operation,” says Robert.
“The disconnected environment is really interesting, because vessels at sea are some of the least connected environments that exist still on our planet, where even getting data ashore can be a logistical hurdle. We have to employ things like satellite technology to be able to even get the data off the vessel.”
As Robert explains, this disjointed approach means that by the time data reaches the shore, it’s often outdated, leading to missed opportunities for intervention or improvements.
“Even if you’ve got the data coming back from those vessels and you’re able to put in place the processes to crunch it and get the insights that you need, if you don’t have the right timely processes in place, then often it’s too late to action. This delay hampers your ability to optimise operations, mitigate risks, and improve crew readiness.”
Where OTG Can Help: A New Approach to Data
OTG has demonstrated its strength as a provider of digital solutions that benefit crews in their operational environment. Now, OTG is expanding its expertise into data solutions that will make data accessible, timely, and actionable. This initiative will remove the pressure on shoreside stakeholders to collate and analyse huge volumes of data from disparate sources.
“That’s really been the driving force for us to develop a new approach to data across all our solutions. We want to deliver a new way for our customers to get access to and leverage value out of the data that is already being collected,”
Robert explains.
“Data isn’t an end in itself – it’s a means to us optimising business performance, to derisk, and to move our industry forward.”
Particularly in the case of crew training, having visibility of the data captured in learning systems is essential for understanding crew engagement, improving learning experiences and responding to events and changes happening in the wider landscape.
However, the teams responsible for training have lacked the tools, time, and analytical knowledge to fully leverage their data. Robert adds,
“What OTG is doing is really about that availability and access, and the democratisation of access to data.”
Introducing the Ocean Learning Dashboards
OTG is making learning data accessible through the introduction of Ocean Learning Dashboards, which simplify the process of accessing and analysing training data. They provide easy-to-use, interactive visualisation tools to gain insights from activity captured in the Ocean Learning Platform. The interface enables customers to leverage data from crew learning behaviours in the platform to identify potential weaknesses that can be actioned immediately.
“The main thing for training managers is understanding how the learning matrix that they’ve very carefully designed is being executed by the crew across vessels and fleets.”
Robert explains.
“You can easily see which vessels are completing their training requirements and, more importantly, what’s not being completed. It might be that there’s certain topics that people are avoiding and so they need to nudge along the journey.”
Using data visualisation in the Ocean Learning Dashboards, training managers can spot trends and take action before small issues escalate into safety or compliance risks.
Turning Data into Insights
One of the most powerful features of the Ocean Learning Dashboards is the ability to drill down into specific data points, whether it’s crew members, individual vessels, or specific training topics.
Roberts says.
“In a few clicks, managers can see trends and usage at different levels of granularity.
For example, if you’ve created your own piece of material using Rapid E-Learning, and you want to understand if it is being engaged with in the way that you’re expecting across your fleet vessels, you can quite easily filter down to that level to get an answer to your question.”
A Strategic Solution for Maritime Leaders
The ability to harness data isn’t just about improving training outcomes—it’s about using insights to enhance broader operational performance. By empowering teams with up-to-date visibility into crew learning insights, Ocean Learning Dashboards help leaders de-risk operations, improve safety, and drive sustainable growth.
“Accurate and timely insight into your business enables better decision-making,”
Robert concludes.
“Having the right visibility into your crew’s training and performance allows you to focus on strategic priorities, reducing risks and driving long-term operational excellence.”
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