One of theICEway’s core values is innovation. As such, we are always striving to develop new, cutting edge products. One of these is our tzChromar IT Solution, designed for the cruise industry. Here we speak with Product Manager David Tibbles, who has played a key role in successfully taking tzChromar to market.
“Addressing Existing Issues Is Vital”
David, tell us about your role here at theICEway.
I came on board to help with the product side of things. It was just before the pandemic and we were keen to focus on the cruise industry as it has been such an important sector for theICEway. We always embrace innovation so we wanted something that hadn’t been done before. Addressing existing issues is vital too, because otherwise the new issues that arise are just going to leave everybody backed up.
So we took all of these factors into consideration – having a focus on cruise, adopting a cutting-edge stance and attempting to solve a real problem. Conor (Byrne, co-founder of theICEway) had previously come up with a solution aimed at tackling time zone issues at sea. When we revisited that together, it seemed like the right project to rekindle and then try to evolve.
My role as Product Manager then entailed working with the developers to ensure that tzChromar was born. Conor was of course heavily involved as were the other cruise IT experts at theICEway. There was a lot of testing and troubleshooting as you can probably imagine. We spoke with a lot of cruise industry insiders to ensure what we were trying to do was going to be effective. We obviously had to also make sure that the problem we were targeting was important enough to fix!
“There Are 38 Million Time-Related Problems At Sea”
What is the problem you are trying to solve?
We wanted to find a way of keeping the devices on a ship to the relevant ship time / time zone. That has traditionally been a major headache at sea requiring a lot of human effort. You have up to 2,000 devices on a ship and these devices were adjusted manually before tzChromar. There are over 200 cruise ships in that position and around 80,000 time zone changes required. We therefore worked out that there are 38 million time-related problems at sea.
If you don’t have the correct time on board a vessel then the experience for crew and guests is severely impacted. How do you know what time to open or close a shop? When do you go for dinner? These are things many people take for granted but the effort involved in ensuring a smooth operation is huge.
With tzChromar, cruise lines can plot the current position of a ship. They can then either schedule in time zone changes or apply them instantly with a couple of clicks. All devices will update automatically, it’s as simple as that. tzChromar also enables cruise lines to have a fleet-wide overview of all ships, which is absolutely crucial.
“We Have Successfully Deployed TzChromar On 9 Cruise Ships”
You have taken the solution out into the cruise market; what feedback have you received?
It has been all very positive so far, I’m glad to say! In fact, we have successfully deployed tzChromar on 9 cruise ships with more being lined up. I think that cruise lines are very astute, they know a decent solution when they see it and it just comes down to their own priorities.
Find out more about the tzChromar IT Solution, or contact us to arrange a short demonstration.
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