Marsa Maroc
            

The Marsa Maroc Group is a multi-traffic and multi-site port operator that works with import and export traffic as well as the transshipment market. The company offers a complete range of port services for cargo and ships, complementary value-added services and related logistics services to port service providers. Along with being the trailblazer of the Moroccan market, Marsa Maroc also has ambitions globally. With a turnover of MAD 3.6 billion (USD 330 million) in 2021, the company employs nearly 2,500 people (excluding subcontractors) across 24 terminals and 10 ports.

A need for interconnection with the port ecosystem

As part of its activities, Marsa operates with a large number of stakeholders who form the ecosystem of international trade working in a port: port authorities, handling operators, shipping agents, leaders, logistics operators, customs, foreign exchange office, etc. To simplify its exchanges with these various actors, Marsa needed to connect its IT system to the Port Community System (PCS), the Moroccan single-window platform for interconnection between all port operators.

“For this purpose, we were looking for a data exchange system based on EDI flows which, when we launched the project ten years ago, was an innovative technology,” explains Said Benjelloun, CIO of Marsa Maroc. “We also wanted to be able to rely on a robust solution, in particular so that there would be no time lag between sending and receiving of information, a system that could guarantee that all data was sent and received correctly, and finally, a system capable of alerting us in the event of errors or anomalies observed during the exchange of data.”

Following an invitation to tender, Marsa Maroc selected webMethods from Software AG due to its robustness and price.

E-Mothep, a local partner

While webMethods was initially deployed at Marsa in partnership with the integrator, CBI, the subsequent migrations, parameterizations and updates were carried out with E-Mothep. ”Our partner, E-Mothep, is taking care of the integration of webMethods into our existing solutions, its modeling and deployment," adds Said Benjelloun. Due to its complexity, this project required several tests and Proofs of Concept (POC) that E-Mothep carried out with positive results. For their part, Software AG is responsible for online assistance and training on the tool.

Port work flows now optimized

Today, all ship arrival and berthing announcements, the receipt of provisional and final manifests, trans-coding and the management of associated anomalies are handled by the webMethods platform installed by Marsa. If a trans-coding error is discovered when a ship arrives, Marsa reports it in the webMethods platform, which then establishes the link to the PCS. The PCS then reports the error to the ship's various clients.

“For example, we notify the PCS via this channel as soon as we receive an extra or undeclared container, or conversely, if a container is missing,” explains Said Benjelloun. “Any anomaly is therefore reported in this way. This system allows us to optimize our management and planning processes for port operations and unloading, for example, of containers or bulk carriers. It also allows us to centralize all the elements necessary for the declaration of customs duties, such as for outgoing weighed containers. The error rate detected on the customs release form thanks to webMethods is estimated at 10%.”

Today with webMethods, Marsa manages more than 5,000 ships and 2,642 TEU (20’ containers) per day, on average (source: Review of Maritime Transport 2021).

webMethods helps Marsa reduce its carbon footprint

Marsa Maroc is also a company particularly committed to topics related to sustainable development, decarbonization and digitalization.

“Today, our global project of digital transformation and interconnection of systems, in which the Software AG solution plays a role, allows us to optimize our business processes and reduce our carbon footprint,” clarified Said Benjelloun. “For example, by helping us to identify anomalies and disputes, the webMethods solution contributes reducing the number of ship passages and carriers that come to pick up goods at the quay. Similarly, the digitalization of the entire chain linked to the customs release form allows us to reduce from three to one the number of customer visits required to collect goods, by 90% the number of visits linked to the filing of ship documents and by 50% the number of visits linked to export forecasts.”

An evolution towards API Management to accelerate response times

For the moment, all exchanges between webMethods and the PCS are handled via EDI. In order to further optimize exchanges and accelerate the flows and response times between the various participants in the operations it manages, Marsa plans to deploy Software AG's API Management solution in 2023. “This future evolution is driven by the desire of our users and businesses to have a more real-time synchronization of messages that we cannot always provide with EDI flows,” continued Said Benjelloun. “We can now meet this demand thanks to the innovative technologies on which API Management is based.”