Strategic Thought Group has completed phase two of ALDIS, an internet based system which assesses liability, calculates the Light Dues and prints the Light Dues Certificates. Until 2004 this process was carried out by shipping agents in the UK.

The new system has shown significant benefits in terms of a reduction in the number of errors compared to the former paper based system, which involved a great deal of data entry. Payments are now collected from the shipping agents' bank accounts by direct debit, reducing the amount of time involved as well as the number of errors. Light Dues Certificates are issued on receipt of the correct fee.

Phase one of ALDIS went live in 2004 and focussed on the issuing of Certificates over the internet and how that would work with the shipping agents involved in the collection process. This meant choosing an Internet Service Provider to build a very robust, fault tolerant system and designing one that was able to run on even the most basic hardware in some of the agents' offices in smaller ports.

Phase two involved checking vessel movements against the Certificates issued, the integration of a financial system to enable collection of unpaid dues and new software for issuing annual invoices to UK fishing vessels and tugs. Trinity House selected Strategic Thought Group to carry out this application development work, which also involved moving data from an HP3000 written in COBOL to a more modern open environment.

The transition from the paper base system was eased by basing ALDIS on the original processes. Many of the screens were designed to look like the old paper forms and were therefore familiar to users and shipping agents.

MJ Information No: 21635