The Marcura Group, a Dubai-based group of companies focused on providing business solutions to the maritime industry, announced the launch of MarDocs, an innovative, cloud-based collaboration tool.
Charterers find themselves with ever-growing numbers of fixtures that refer to “as per last” without being under proper document control. Increasing governance requirements makes it critical to convert the fixture process into a highly structured, compliant and legally controlled documentation process, but without delaying or confusing the fast-paced freight brokering work.
MarDocs has been built to elegantly, simply and affordably support the well-known fixture process, while securing full audit trail, full control over all clauses and changes to them and the ability to produce a final, high quality charter party at the push of a button, Marcura said.
MarDocs offers a collaborative, cloud-based solution that fully automates workflow and provides clear, structured and complete charter party documentation. With a simple and intuitive interface, MarDocs is a major breakthrough for fixture compliance and quality, securely enabling charterers, owners and brokers to manage fixtures in a whole new way. When fixing a vessel for a voyage, all parties involved in the transaction require a well-formatted fixture recap and a full charter party. This ensures that the correct terms and conditions are applied and all parties work from the same set of documents.
The system is cloud-based, accessible from anywhere and allows the owner, charterer or broker to see and make amendments. Through the MarDocs Deal Entry Screen, the terms and voyage details are entered into the system, which then generates all relevant documents quickly and efficiently. Based on an editable counter party ‘Agreed Terms’ Library, authorized to the broker, the industry can say goodbye to the risks of ‘As Per Last’ fixtures.
MarDocs streamlines the documentation and fixture process from the ground up, making it instant and effortless to amend or agree any part of any fixture document. Line by line, paragraph by paragraph, every change is tracked and every version saved.
“Marcura is a professional services provider to the maritime industry and our customers continue to trust us to deliver efficiencies and business intelligence through innovation. Without any ties to owners, traders, brokers or agencies, Marcura provides highly trusted services to streamline shipping-related transactions,” said Jens Poulsen, Co-Founder and CEO of The Marcura Group.
“By not being a commercial stakeholder in the freight space, Marcura, in MarDocs, can offer the industry the safest and most neutral platform on which to conduct the fixtures. MarDocs is the realization of 12 months of focused development and thorough testing with experienced shipping veterans as well as document management and compliance specialists,” Poulsen continued.
“We invested resources in the development of MarDocs as we believe the benefits of independent solutions raises the standards of the entire shipping industry.”
Adrian Challinor, Product Director of MarDocs, added, “MarDocs has undergone the toughest and latest in cyber-security testing, driven by our over-abundant concern for the confidentiality and security of our customers’ business transactions. With a substantial number of live fixtures having now passed through the system, and with a range of product features on the roadmap for the coming months as well as the extension of the solution to other sectors, we expect MarDocs to set the standard for fixture collaboration and document management.”
