What the Task Assistant® Platform is
Imagine a single user entry platform. And imagine that it recognizes your responsibilities within your organization. As a result, it provides you only the appropriate functionality, actions and correct information. And at the time that you need it. That is what the Task Assistant® Platform is.
As a result, the available functionality and fine-grained actions are configured for each of your tasks and assigned to your role as a user. Simply said, you get preconfigured and tailored functionality per role and user that is easily adjustable.
In addition, the platform allows you to build or integrate additional custom-made solutions that can stand and function alone. More so, they will work with the existing solutions that are part of the platform. And they will share platform features such as automated communication and the workflow engine.
Convenience and security
Forget the permissions havoc that other systems leave to the system administrator. A havoc, which now, with the data security legislation, becomes harder to manage. Convenience and security are therefore another side of the Task Assistant Platform®.
Software-friendly and future-looking
In addition, Task Assistant® Platform is software-friendly and future-looking. This is easy to prove because the platform enables the most suitable blend of Ulysses Systems Applications to integrate with 3rd party products used by an organization.
In other words, we support our clients and prospects in realizing the IT ecosystem of their choice. The reason is simply that innovation cannot be blocked. Especially in shipping software, innovation is continuous.
“All vendors in all shipping domains being a prime example, respond to industry needs, as they arise, doing their best to keep clients happy. Nothing is going to stop them and nor should anything stop them.”
Find out more about how sustainable, usable, configurable, scalable, adaptable, actionable, integrable and reportable Task Assistant Platform® is, and how advantageous this has been for our clients.
Sustainable
Ulysses Systems ensures that its entire customer base shares a single sustainable, configurable platform, the Task Assistant®.
Also, Task Assistant® development follows an Agile Software Development to ensure continuous quality and improvement. Thus, the TA Platform approach ensures that ship managers:
- Continuously leverage the advantages of the underlying Microsoft, Web and Mobile technologies that Task Assistant® utilizes
- Consistently profit from new business features that mirror changes in industry or company needs
At present, Task Assistant® is pioneering the fast development of new annexes to existing software. The Task Assistant Platform® is, therefore, an ideal investment opportunity for companies, keen to develop their own solutions.
“TMS Tankers has fully tailored the Task Assistant to its needs using the Platform Facilities offered by Ulysses. These features have been continuously supported and upgraded since 2006.”
“In-house customizations that are enabled by the Task Assistant Service Workbench can be applied immediately and maintained indefinitely.”
Sustainable
Ulysses Systems ensures that its entire customer base shares a single sustainable, configurable platform, the Task Assistant®.
Also, Task Assistant® development follows an Agile Software Development to ensure continuous quality and improvement. Thus, the TA Platform approach ensures that ship managers:
- Continuously leveraging the advantages of the underlying Microsoft, Web and Mobile technologies the Task Assistant is based on
- Consistently profit from new business features that mirror changes in industry or company needs
At present, Task Assistant® is pioneering the fast development of new annexes to existing software. The Task Assistant Platform® is, therefore, an ideal investment opportunity for companies, keen to develop their own solutions.
“TMS Tankers has fully tailored the Task Assistant to its needs using the Platform Facilities offered by Ulysses. These features have been continuously supported and upgraded since 2006.”
“In-house customizations that are enabled by the Task Assistant Service Workbench can be applied immediately and maintained indefinitely.”
Usable
Task Assistant® is usable and intuitive, which encourages both use and fast adoption of the system. So, the training period of your crew is minimal thanks to:
- Consistent user interfaces and navigation of the system for all users and in all modules
- Seamless integration between different platform products e.g. Marine Planned Maintenance and Purchasing and Document Management
- A Task/Goal oriented approach
SYSTEM TRAINING OF CREWS
Minimum training expenditure among the most highly paid end users of software in any industry is a feat. Task Assistant® unique role centric building blocks save money and time training vessel crews.
“On the first 30 vessels, Task Assistant was successfully deployed with no training whatsoever. Crew usage rates hit 100% within 4 months.”
Usable
Task Assistant® is usable and intuitive, which encourages both use and fast adoption of the system. So, the training period of your crew is minimal thanks to:
- Consistent user interfaces and navigation of the system for all users and in all modules
- Seamless integration between different platform products e.g. Marine Planned Maintenance and Purchasing and Document Management
- A Task/Goal oriented approach
SYSTEM TRAINING OF CREWS
Minimum training expenditure among the most highly paid end users of software in any industry is a feat. Task Assistant® unique role centric building blocks save money and time training vessel crews.
“On the first 30 vessels, Task Assistant was successfully deployed with no training whatsoever. Crew usage rates hit 100% within 4 months.”
Configurable
Configurable Task Assistant® means that the system is flexible, upgradeable and future-proof. And for a reason. Because Ulysses Systems is the only marine software provider that takes a scientific approach to human cognitive processes and aligns it with corporate activities.
Our trademark Task Oriented approach enables a highly customisable setup of task profiles with combinations of actions and views that depict your organization exactly. Furthermore, the system facilitates predefinitions of internal workflow processes easy for a non-developer to configure and adjust. This is highly convenient for consistent and accurate process mapping.
Task Assistant® by being configurable is an invaluable tool for change management and continuous improvement.
You will be glad to streamline company internal procedures as you go along. Because Task Assistant® by being configurable is an invaluable tool for change management and continuous improvement.
And use your own company terminology to make your transition to new system smoother.
“Modelling, design, execution, and maintenance of business activities across different departments and physical locations is simplified by TA Workbench facilities.”
“By enabling an unrestricted combination of views, users, tasks and contexts, the Task Assistant helps your organization unlock its fullest potential.”
Configurable
Configurable Task Assistant® means that the system is flexible, upgradeable and future-proof. And for a reason. Because Ulysses Systems is the only marine software provider that takes a scientific approach to human cognitive processes and aligns it with corporate activities.
Our trademark Task Oriented approach enables a highly customisable setup of task profiles with combinations of actions and views that depict your organization exactly. Furthermore, the system facilitates predefinitions of internal workflow processes easy for a non-developer to configure and adjust. This is highly convenient for consistent and accurate process mapping.
Task Assistant® by being configurable is an invaluable tool for change management and continuous improvement.
You will be glad to streamline company internal procedures as you go along. Because Task Assistant® by being configurable is an invaluable tool for change management and continuous improvement.
And use your own company terminology to make your transition to new system smoother.
“Modelling, design, execution, and maintenance of business activities across different departments and physical locations is simplified by TA Workbench facilities.”
“By enabling an unrestricted combination of views, users, tasks and contexts, the Task Assistant helps your organization unlock its fullest potential.”
Scalable
Scalable Task Assistant® means that in 2020, Ulysses Systems surpassed the 10,000,000 benchmark of reported jobs on just one client database. So, together with our clients we look forward to the next reporting milestone. Meanwhile, 10,000,000 reported jobs on one database speaks volumes about system robustness.
HIGH USAGE AND DATA INTEGRITY
The exceeded benchmark of 10.000.000 job completions logged on one database prove Task Assistant® to be remarkably solid, tremendously usable and data rich.
“With such a heavy number of concurrent users performing transactions over more than a decade, Ulysses has proven a reliable partner in providing our personnel with timely and reliable business information.”
“Possibly the largest, single database Fleet Management installation in the world runs on the Task Assistant at Bourbon Offshore.”
Scalable
Scalable Task Assistant® means that in 2020, Ulysses Systems surpassed the 10,000,000 benchmark of reported jobs on just one client database. So, together with our clients we look forward to the next reporting milestone. Meanwhile, 10,000,000 reported jobs on one database speaks volumes about system robustness.
HIGH USAGE AND DATA INTEGRITY
The exceeded benchmark of 10.000.000 job completions logged on one database prove Task Assistant® to be remarkably solid, tremendously usable and data rich.
“With such a heavy number of concurrent users performing transactions over more than a decade, Ulysses has proven a reliable partner in providing our personnel with timely and reliable business information.”
“Possibly the largest, single database Fleet Management installation in the world runs on the Task Assistant at Bourbon Offshore.”
Easily Adaptable
Easily Adaptable to the marine enterprise means that, as business needs and technological requirements continue to evolve, so will Task Assistant®.
This is especially relevant in shipping, where every regulation code – such as ISM or TMSA – will change over the span of a typical project. Thus, when there is a need to modify and update, Task Assistant® adaptability guarantees minimum cost and complexity.
More so, our high staff retention rate means that we have consultants that have seen the full development of major regulations since their inception. In effect, through the Task Assistant® Platform ship managers have managed to:
- Add a large number of vessels in a short period of time
- Add a fleet of an entirely different asset class
- Move their management to a different country
- Split from a single corporate entity into multiple ones
“We selected a system that could best manage a hasty deployment: One that could be deployed and tweaked process by process.”
“Task Assistant provides automation tools to build tasks and workflows without coding: Work that can be done by an in-house administrator.”
Easily Adaptable
Easily Adaptable to the marine enterprise means that, as business needs and technological requirements continue to evolve, so will Task Assistant®.
This is especially relevant in shipping, where every regulation code – such as ISM or TMSA – will change over the span of a typical project. Thus, when there is a need to modify and update, Task Assistant® adaptability guarantees minimum cost and complexity.
More so, our high staff retention rate means that we have consultants that have seen the full development of major regulations since their inception. In effect, through the Task Assistant® Platform ship managers have managed to:
- Add a large number of vessels in a short period of time
- Add a fleet of an entirely different asset class
- Move their management to a different country
- Split from a single corporate entity into multiple ones
Companies, in fact, have an interest to invest in platforms in the hope that they can create products, which can be developed faster and can last longer.
“We selected a system that could best manage a hasty deployment: One that could be deployed and tweaked process by process.”
“Task Assistant provides automation tools to build tasks and workflows without coding: Work that can be done by an in-house administrator.”
Actionable
Actionable data
Actionable data is data you can track and that you can reuse. In short, actionable data offers a reliable picture of what is going on in the real world. However, for data to be actionable it must be unified.
Unified Data
And the basis for unified data is for the system to understand data provenance. And also to have a model of how data propagates to the processes, where the data is consumed. In other words, where it is actionable.
- Actionable data is unified data, which disallows duplicates and ensures your analytics are reliable
- Weed out wasteful spending, boost enterprise operational efficiency with unique asset management features
- Benefit from built-in features that identify, isolate and rectify inconsistencies, for example, errors associated with manual data entry
- Relax with a platform that automates data capture and validates data at the point of entry
Task Assistant® Platform understands the provenance of spare parts identifications.
It can handle the same spare part with many different identities: the manufacturer’s identity, the spare part providers’ and buyers’ identities.
It tracks the spare part in processes that range from maintenance to requisitioning, vendor selection, inventory management, dispatch of goods and delivery onboard vessels.
“At Naftomar, due to ease of use and the reliable data that results from this, inventory is reported according to FiFo standards.”
“Although we have data on 328,000 individual items of machinery such as pump, prime movers etc., the data we actually manage is only 20,000 unique machines.”
“Limiting the amount of duplicates and maintaining a tidy database is a prerequisite in fully leveraging the benefits of an online market place such as ShipServ. TA fully integrates with ShipServ to enable a streamlined procurement process.”
Actionable
Actionable data
Actionable data is data you can track and that you can reuse. In short, actionable data offers a reliable picture of what is going on in the real world. However, for data to be actionable it must be unified.
Unified Data
The basis for unified data is for the system to understand data provenance. And also to have a model of how data propagates to the processes, where the data is consumed. In other words, where it is actionable.
- Actionable data is unified data, which disallows duplicates and ensures your analytics are reliable
- Weed out wasteful spending, boost enterprise operational efficiency with unique asset management features
- Benefit from built-in features that identify, isolate and rectify inconsistencies, for example, errors associated with manual data entry
- Relax with a platform that automates data capture and validates data at the point of entry
Task Assistant® Platform understands the provenance of spare parts identifications.
It can handle the same spare part with many different identities: the manufacturer’s identity, the spare part providers’ and buyers’ identities.
It tracks the spare part in processes that range from maintenance to requisitioning, vendor selection, inventory management, dispatch of goods and delivery onboard vessels.
“At Naftomar, due to ease of use and the reliable data that results from this, inventory is reported according to FiFo standards.”
“Although we have data on 328,000 individual items of machinery such as pump, prime movers etc., the data we actually manage is only 20,000 unique machines.”
“Limiting the amount of duplicates and maintaining a tidy database is a prerequisite in fully leveraging the benefits of an online market place such as ShipServ. TA fully integrates with ShipServ to enable a streamlined procurement process.”
Integrable
Task Assistant® Platform, a Microsoft technologies’ based product, is highly integrable. Task Assistant® Platform applies various integration methods to seamlessly integrate business modules and to plug in 3rd party applications.
The client organization, therefore, can harness the flexibility of the Platform to incorporate and integrate the most suitable blend of Ulysses Systems Applications and 3rd party products for the organization.
The ability to integrate with disparate systems exponentially increases value and enables a cross-connectivity which enables a Best of Breed approach (BoB). Best of Breed ensures that you are:
- Choosing solutions with the most features and functions
- You have the best type of product in each department
- You work with more specialized consultants
A result of the BoB approach is that ship Management companies integrate Task Assistant® with their ERP solutions such as SAP, Oracle Financials, Microsoft Dynamics GP and Microsoft SharePoint and SoftCo.
And also with shipping industry leaders such as: James Fisher-Mimic (Condition Monitoring Software), ShipServ (E-procurement Platform), OCS HR, Kongsberg (Engine Room and Automation Systems), VARD (Automation Systems).
“TA Purchasing fully integrates SAP, our main financial solution. In a little less than 6 years 50000 purchase orders have been sent from TA to SAP.”
Integrable
Task Assistant® Platform, a Microsoft technologies’ based product, is highly integrable. Task Assistant® Platform applies various integration methods to seamlessly integrate business modules and to plug in 3rd party applications.
The client organization, therefore, can harness the flexibility of the Platform to incorporate and integrate the most suitable blend of Ulysses Systems Applications and 3rd party products for the organization.
The ability to integrate with disparate systems exponentially increases value and enables a cross-connectivity which enables a Best of Breed approach (BoB). Best of Breed ensures that you are:
- Choosing solutions with the most features and functions
- You have the best type of product in each department
- You work with more specialized consultants
A result of the BoB approach is that ship Management companies integrate Task Assistant® with their ERP solutions such as SAP, Oracle Financials, Microsoft Dynamics GP and Microsoft SharePoint and SoftCo. And also with shipping industry leaders such as: James Fisher-Mimic (Condition Monitoring Software), ShipServ (E-procurement Platform), OCS HR, Kongsberg (Engine Room and Automation Systems), VARD (Automation Systems).
“TA Purchasing fully integrates SAP, our main financial solution. In a little less than 6 years 50000 purchase orders have been sent from TA to SAP.”
Reportable
Task Assistant Reporting Module is fully integrated with Task Assistant Platform® database. This module facilitates the collection of information and data from different business units submitted via the integrated platform products and/or 3rd party products.
For example, vessels and the office submit data via our Shipping Solutions (Document Management, Maintenance, Purchasing and Crewing). The TA Platform extracts the data, collates and stores it in order to produce reports assisting in:
- Accident and Incident Analysis
- Undesired Events Statistics
- Regulatory and Company KPI’s etc
Task Assistant® Reporting Module provides:
- Complete facility for installation and configuration of company reports
- Autonomy in modifying company reporting requirements
- Repository of near real time data assures management overview of enterprise performance
- Assures identification of trends and areas for process improvement
“Ulysses’ Task Assistant is known to encourage structured data entry and reconciliation where our vessels can feed our organization with reliable and actionable information.”
“Compounded by our highly skilled crews, data capture has never been an issue for Arcadia.”
“Task Assistant dashboards and ad hoc reporting enable our office staff to explore scenarios to greater depth, and decision-makers are free of restraints inherent in many business intelligence platforms.”
- Ready-made, immediately usable analytics supporting use cases that are common across clients
- A fresh installation of Task Assistant® comes with more than 1000 folder views, that is, over 1000 cubes for managers to create their reports
Reportable
Task Assistant Reporting Module is fully integrated with Task Assistant® Platform database. This module facilitates the collection of information and data from different business units submitted via the integrated platform products and/or 3rd party products.
For example data submitted by the vessel or the office via our Shipping Solutions (Document Management, Planned Maintenance, Purchasing and Crewing) can be extracted by TA, collated and stored in order to produce reports assisting in:
- Accident and Incident Analysis
- Undesired Events Statistics
- Regulatory and Company KPI’s etc
Task Assistant® Reporting provides:
- Complete facility for installation and configuration of company reports
- Autonomy in modifying company reporting requirements
- Repository of near real time data assures management overview of enterprise performance
- Assures identification of trends and areas for process improvement
“Ulysses’ Task Assistant is known to encourage structured data entry and reconciliation where our vessels can feed our organization with reliable and actionable information.”
“Compounded by our highly skilled crews, data capture has never been an issue for Arcadia.”
“Task Assistant dashboards and ad hoc reporting enable our office staff to explore scenarios to greater depth, and decision-makers are free of restraints inherent in many business intelligence platforms.”
- Ready-made, immediately usable analytics supporting use cases that are common across clients
- A fresh installation of Task Assistant® comes with more than 1000 folder views, that is, over 1000 cubes for managers to create their reports