FISHING TECHNOLOGY
AI AND THE ART OF INFORMED DECISIONS It’s all about making it possible for users to make the most fully informed decisions possible, said Jón Heiðar Pálsson, who heads sales at Icelandic software leader Wise
8 The arrival of artificial intelligence is a dream that’s coming true for Jón Heiðar Pálsson at Icelandic software company Wise
Located in Iceland, Wise has built up a strong reputation for its accounting and business software systems that are in use around the world, based on Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central. The Wise offerings include WiseFish, tailored for seafood companies, and he commented that somewhere between 80 and 90% of all Icelandic quotas are managed via a Wise system in one way or another as WiseFish in particular was a revolutionary tool when it first appeared on the market 25 years ago. “The fundamanetal difference between what WiseFish can do and other systems is that WiseFish holds all of the information relating to the seafood value chain in one place, whch provides a unique overview of the process as a whole, from catching, through processing, and all the way to sales and distribution,” he explained. By building on the foundations offered by Microsoft’s Business Central, today used by more than 160,000 companies around the world, the service side of the system is fully covered, plus there are tailored add-ons that cover particular taxation requirements, different languages, and more. There are agents in most countries able to install standard systems, and to provide service for additional packages as required. “In the past, all this information was here and there across the value chain. But the arrival of WiseFish made it possible to bring all of these elements together into a single, central database, eliminating the need to enter the same information more than once, instead enabling the data to flow,” he said. “When Navision, which later became Business Central,
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appeared on the scene there was finally a tool that could harmonise databases and simplify processes. What we at Wise have done is to tailor the “fish” interface for this system. There was no need to go deep into developing a business and inventory framework, because that was already there, and instead we were able to focus completely on crafting and fine-tuning an interface that would meet the demands of the seafood sector. So WiseFish was the first system that brought together every strand of information a seafood company needs in a single package.” Digital transformation The technical advances of the last few years and decades have resulted in significant changes to the seafood industry. The digital transformation gathered pace during the 1990s, laying the groundwork for synthesised production processes and the development of communications technology that are behind today’s innovations. Reliable information is the basis of good decision-making. By linking systems such as Marel’s Innova production systems and Wise peripherals with WiseFish users can maintain a complete overview of fisheries, production, inventory, sales and distribution with far more precision than has been possible before, and can take business decisions based on this up-to-date data. Much of the production process is now automated, and the introduction of artificial intelligence isn’t far away – and for Jón Heiðar Pálsson, this is a dream that’s about to come true. “Put yourself in the shoes of a production manager who
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