In house, dedicated ITC support

Offshore Shipbrokers Ltd, unlike many of it's competitors, have a full time ITC person. Chris Winstone is responsible for ensuring the day to day smooth running of our systems, phone systems, network and website as well as in house application development and programming. More

Having dedicated IT within the company means that Offshore Shipbrokers Ltd have the best ITC support available at all times. We have support agreements with third party IT companies for cover should Chris take time off for any reason or during holiday periods.

Chris installs and maintains our company servers, PC's and laptops in both our London and Aberdeen offices. He makes sure we have the latest patches and protection installed and also operates a help desk which ensures brokers and staff can deal with there own IT issues quickly and effectively. Having permanent IT on-site ensures that our systems are robust, secure and can be evolved, scaled and adapted quickly in-line with the changing markets within which we operate.

Bespoke Software Development

Chris is also responsible for developing and programming both our Website and our bespoke internal broking tools. Many of the tools our brokers use day to day were developed in-house in collaboration with our brokers. We call the suite of tools our brokers use 'Informed Chartering'. Please click here to read more about 'Informed Chartering'. Working closly with the brokers in-house enables efficient and fast project development, allowing a quicker turn around from the inital idea to the fully working application. Chris is permanently on-hand to further develop applications to cope with the brokers ever evolving markets.

Communication

A fast Leased Line connects our brokers via Email and the Web to a vast network of clients, ship owners and correspondents world wide. Faxes and Emails are received and sent via a sophisticated integrated Network Fax/Email system allowing the brokers to respond quickly to requirements and correspondence received on any medium. More

Our brokers are all provided with the latest Blackberry devices which allow them to respond to clients needs quickly when out of the office or out with business hours. Also, importantly our brokers have no limits on sending or receiving Email. A feature which has allowed us to manage large attachments on behalf of clients quickly and easily. Additionally all our brokers have the ability to remote access their broking desktops from any Internet connected PC.

Security

Our Email system, servers and PC's are protected from virus, malware, spam and intrusion by a multi tier security model which includes the latest Firewall, appliance based protection, ISP filtering and dedicated software scanning technology. More

Should the worst happen!, our systems, in-line with ISO 9001:2000 are regularly documented and a dedicated DR policy ensures we can get our broking systems operating quickly again. If needs be we can also switch our broking operations including all IT and communications to our sister offices either in London or Aberdeen.