Braving the elements to meet global demand

When organizations say they go the extra mile for their customers, there can be few that go as far as American Seafoods. Operating in the waters of the Bering Seas and the North Pacific Ocean requires experience, skill, and bravery to land some of the most sought-after wild fish species in the world.

American Seafoods is the world’s largest at-sea processor of wild Alaskan Pollock and holds the largest allocation of Wild Pacific Hake. Its quality-assured products are distributed around the globe. 

Sustainability is at the core of American Seafoods’ operations, from its base in Seattle, Washington, its home port in Dutch Harbour, Alaska, its global sales and distribution network, and on board its seven state-of-the-art vessels.

Team working on an epic scale

Delivering delicious fish in prime condition to customers thousands of miles away requires expert organization, communication, and teams that work at epic scale.

In the prime fishing season, American Seafoods’ boats are at sea for up to three weeks at a time catching and processing fish. Upon return to port, vessels must turn around in 24 hours, offload the products, replenish supplies, and take on new crew members before returning to the fishing grounds. 

To support its onshore and offshore teams, the company has been replacing legacy IT systems with new digital technologies. The ServiceNow platform enables fast, efficient, and secure operations that maintain its global reputation for quality and reliability.

“Our vessels are like little villages in the middle of the ocean,” explains Chief Information Officer, Dar Khalighi. “We’re not only fishing and processing around the clock, but also looking after the safety, accommodating, and feeding crews of 150 people, all in a very confined place. This requires skill, innovation, and advanced technology, to enable onshore teams, our crews, and their families to communicate and share information 24/7, which is vital, and it’s why we began working with ServiceNow.”

Transformational capabilities with the ServiceNow platform

Dar’s ServiceNow journey began with IT Service Management (ITSM) and IT Asset Management (ITAM), to replace legacy systems that were no longer fit for purpose. Later down the line, the organization saw an opportunity to expand the ServiceNow platform’s capabilities with Field Service Management (FSM). Leveraging the ServiceNow platform, the company has implemented a ServiceNow portal and a service catalog to provide employees, both onshore and offshore, with self-service functionality to resolve routine IT support issues. The Platform also powers the IT service desk and incident management teams, with data consolidated in its ServiceNow CMDB.

“The ServiceNow platform enables us to really see what’s happening, to manage our environment effectively and support our people more efficiently. For example, when our ships are in port, we have a very short time to carry out IT maintenance. ITSM has given us the visibility and tools to stay organized, assign the right tasks to the right people, and work efficiently.”

Alongside ITSM, Dar also deployed ITAM to keep track of the highly dispersed IT hardware inventory and manage assets throughout their lifecycle. “We now have visibility and control of our IT hardware, from purchase to end-of-life, and there’s clear potential to extend asset management to include our operational technologies, too.

“But it was clear that ServiceNow is so much more than a service or asset management system. It’s a single data model, a complete platform, that could not only transform our IT and hardware management capabilities but support other business areas, too. We could see the meaning and the value of what ServiceNow could provide for us, so next on our journey was Field Service Management.”

Opportunity for process reengineering

Detailed management of every aspect of crew rotation on each vessel’s trips is vital to the business. Highly skilled men and women from 90 countries around the world work for American Seafoods, coming together in closely connected crews for each sailing. Ensuring that the right people are on the right boats and at the right times is challenging. Communication between offshore and onshore teams to manage crew members while maintaining accurate records for each vessel is essential. But existing systems were heavily customized and inflexible with each business requirement change needing manual intervention. There was little opportunity for collaborative working between onshore and offshore teams.

When ServiceNow implementation partner HandCloud demonstrated the features and functionality of Field Service Management (FSM), Dar saw an opportunity to transform the way American Seafoods organized activities that are essential for a successful fishing season: “Our crew is our field force. We saw parallels between FSM and what we do to manage our ships. By extending work orders and work order tasks in FSM, we could manage each season and each trip made by each vessel.

“Implementing FSM also gave us the chance to reengineer our underlying processes, to enable true collaboration within the system, which has been transformative for our people. Now we plan the crew rotation in advance for an entire fishing season in FSM, budgeting and resourcing for each trip of the season for every vessel, saving time for all our teams.”

Sharing information in real time

Leveraging FSM, all crew changes, both personnel and role, can be made in real time by onshore HR teams or by the Purser or Mate onboard the vessels, with those changes automatically shared and visible to all parties. Previously, changes onboard ship produced requests for on shore HR teams to update systems, a process sometimes taking a long time.

An integration between FSM and the company’s HR system means that all crew members’ employment details are available in a single, secure location for onshore and offshore teams to view simultaneously and access complete records in one place to fulfill reporting requirements for the US Coast Guard.

“FSM gives us fast, efficient, and seamless processes, and we can collaborate with vessel managers in real time,” explains Dar. “There’s confidence in the system, with everyone looking at the same information, providing the visibility and control that our vessel and HR managers need.”

Data in ServiceNow, integrated with other internal systems using ServiceNow’s powerful integration tools, allows the company to scale and modernize its legacy systems in a controlled manner with no interruption to its core business functions. “The more precisely we plan each trip in FSM, the more likely we are to hit production targets,” explains Dar. “This maximizes efficiency, helping to maintain high retention rates."

Casting its net wider with GenAI plans

Smoother operation isn’t the final ‘catch’ for American Seafoods. Dar sees the potential the ServiceNow platform could deliver in helping the company meet its sustainability and ESG goals with its built-in generative AI capabilities.

“Our options are endless with ServiceNow” says Dar. “AI could be the next game changer.

“Our people have vast amounts of industry knowledge, and we have access to large volumes of data, including some public industry-related data. The insights that AI can provide could potentially help us to further protect our fishing grounds and improve our performance.”