INTERNATIONAL Logistics Internationales Verkehrswesen (73) 1 | 2021 40 Port Community Systems - Supply Chain App stores of the future? Comparison of recent trends of international Port Community Systems Port Community Systems, Multiple Case Study, Digital Platform, Business model Port Community Systems (PCS) are locally-bound digital platforms to connect the port community. Using a multiple case study, we compare recent developments in service offer, involved stakeholders, service development strategy and data governance aspects of four PCS. The studied PCS show diverging business model developments. The Ports of Singapore and Antwerp choose an open, app-store like innovation platform approach, creating a one-stop trade and logistics ecosystem. Other ports such as Rotterdam or Le Havre choose to keep PCS more closed off, limiting their range of available functions. Ralf Elbert, Ruben Tessmann P ort Community Systems (PCS) are local inter-organizational, multisided platforms that connect various stakeholders of a port, thereby enabling efficient information exchange as well as commercial and value-added services [1, 2]. They reach back to 1982 when the Port of Hamburg introduced the first PCS run by Dakosy [3]. In the early years, the focus was mainly on the digitalization of previously manual and paper-based communication processes between port members, i.e., Electronic Data Interchange (EDI). Amid the Covid-19 pandemic, even more ports around the world rely on or plan to utilize the contactless exchange of data amongst businesses (B2B) as well as between companies and governmental agencies (B2G) [4]. Nowadays, most ports with a PCS have all of their regulatory and port-coordination communication digitalized. With increasing data traffic that was exchanged, computing capacity became an issue in some PCS. Therefore easily scalable cloudbased Software as a Service (SaaS) approaches were employed, which enabled together with other technological innovations such as RFID first value-added services (VAS) such as track and trace of containers within the port [3]. With ever-increasing amounts of data shared through PCS, the question arises, how PCS operators position their platforms. Do they leverage available data alone or do they integrate more stakeholders as well as additional services? How do existing port stakeholders react to sharing “critical” business information with an extended group [2, 5, 6]. This paper aims to shed light on recent developments of business models of international PCS. We will focus our analysis on the upper two-thirds of the well-established business model canvas [7, 8] since both information on cost structures and revenue streams are not available publicly. The following research questions will guide us: Which value-added services are offered by modern PCS and which stakeholders are involved? (Value Proposition, Key Partners, Customer Segments, Key Activities) How are value-added services created and offered and how is data governance handled? (Key Resources, Channels, Customer Relationships) We will try to answer these questions by adopting a comparative multiple-case study using publicly available primary and secondary sources on international PCS. We compare Singapore Customs’ Networked Trade Platform (NTP), Port of Antwerp’s NxtPort and C-Point platforms, Port of Rotterdam and Amsterdam’s Portbase and Le Havre’s SOGET S)ONE platform. These PCS were selected based on the active users, monthly transactions as well as the availability of primary and secondary sources covering topics relevant to the above-stated questions. We searched for information on the four PCS on the most widely used search engines for scholarly and non-scholarly searches (Google Scholar and Google). We manually screened the first 50 search engine results, stopping at 50, as we did not find any relevant results from the 40th result onwards. This procedure has recently been applied in a similar context [9]. Service offer of modern PCS A wide range of value-added services (VAS) are available on the studied PCS platforms. We identified seven categories of services offered. These are: Communication services, Logistical VAS, Logistical Chain VAS, Port management & safety VAS, Navigational VAS, Cargo booking services, Financial VAS, and Insurance & Compliance VAS. Table 1 presents an overview of the services that each of the four PCS platforms currently offers. The PCS with the most advanced services per category was given a full Harvey ball and the remaining PCS were evaluated compared to these services. Communication services cover a wide range of regulatory, port-related and commercial exchange needs of the involved stakeholders. While deviations between the four PCS exist due to differences in local legislation and stakeholder composition, all four cover a wide variety of services to connect the various stakeholders. Similarly, all PCS offer advanced logistical VAS, such as INTERNATIONAL Logistics Internationales Verkehrswesen (73) 1 | 2021 42 as an information and data supplier for external, independent VAS providers. S) ONE chooses a different path, as the example of integrating the Click2Rail platform shows. S)ONE utilizes an extended PCS platform architecture, where the core platform connects with an external platform (in this example of Click2Rail), which offers the additional services. Not all of the external platform’s services necessarily have to be available from the PCS interfaces, though (see Service 2.3 in Figure 2). Both Portbase and S)ONE use highly formalized partnership agreements. S)ONE, for example, does not make interfaces available publicly and Portbase requires a software supplier to already have a PCS user as a customer before signing up as such [26]. NxtPort’s “API and applications market” goes one step further than S)ONE. The core platform is provided by C-Point (formerly Antwerp PCS), while NxtPort is acting as the connected platform for external services, which integrates services by thirdparty developers into the PCS (such as LOGIT ONE [36]). Still, it also openly markets its own and C-Point’s internal data and services that third-party developers can access. As part of their mission statement, the developers of NxtPort formulate the goal that innovative solutions shall be built based on available information in the port community [46]. By openly marketing available data, they encourage potential software providers to integrate their services with NxtPort, utilize its data and offer the services directly to the port community through the PCS. Currently, three applications and multiple APIs from external developers are offered on the NxtPort platform. Singapore’s NTP has the most open approach to the development of new services. The former services for B2B (Port- Net) and B2G (TradeNet) communication have been integrated into the new “one-stop trade and logistics ecosystem” [11] and thereby act as the core of the platform. NTP actively encourages the development of VAS by third-party developers by providing them APIs and sandboxes (i.e., secure and capsuled development environments). As discussed earlier, NTP also addresses a broader range of stakeholders and as a result, Singapore has over 50 VAS by thirdparty entities available. Data governance With an extended stakeholder group, data governance becomes an even more pressing topic as port stakeholders are generally skeptical about sharing data that might profit other companies or even competitors. Recent research suggests that this can be a major barrier to PCS adoption [5, 23]. Portbase, for example, defined strict regulations, policies and procedural approaches for data governance, which include the authentication of every single data exchange, so that only pre-approved exchanges can take place [23]. Similar rules were defined for NTP [12]. NxtPort and C-Point stick out with a novel concept of data governance. Additionally, Antwerp’s PCS platform allows stakeholders to allocate a value to the data they share to the data exchange rules. On top of the usual transaction, monthly recurring and onboarding fees for using the platform, Nxt- Port introduced a so-called “Data fee”, which is set by the respective data owner and has to be paid by the data user [18, 19]. They thereby encourage data sharing and allow data owners to monetarize their data. Conclusion While our research was limited to only four major PCS, we can see from the comparison that the business models of PCS seem to diverge. Portbase follows a strategy that is mostly based on a transactional platform. Data and information are exchanged on the platform, certain additional VAS are offered by the PCS operator, but VAS from independent developers are not available through the platform. The S)ONE platform seems to stand in the middle between the more closed-off Portbase approach and the more open approach of NxtPort/ C-Point and NTP. The latter platform appears to evolve from a sole transaction platform to an innovation platform by opening up to more stakeholders, such as banks, insurances and independent service and platform developers. In this way, PCS can develop into one-stop single windows, where port stakeholders can handle (almost) all of their transport and supply chain-related processes seamlessly end-to-end. They do so by choosing precisely the needed applications for their tasks from a marketplace or app store that is part of the PCS platform. It comes down to whether a PCS wants to keep the community data more exclusive and ensure easier trust-building among stakeholders. This approach can potentially limit the breadth of available functions. Open platforms with an extended stakeholder group, on the other hand, will have to find new ways to encourage its members to actively share valuable data, such as Nxt- Port’s “Data fee” initiative. Future research could test our observations to a broader set of Port and also Air- Figure 1: PCS stakeholders. Own depiction inspired by and partially based on [23] Figure 2: Simplified model of PCS platform architecture development. Own depiction inspired by-[26] Logistics INTERNATIONAL Internationales Verkehrswesen (73) 1 | 2021 43 port Community Systems such as Dakosy’s PCS in Hamburg, the Dubai Trade platform or Cargonaut at Schiphol airport to see how these platforms are positioning themselves on the continuum between transactional and innovation platform. It would also be interesting to see which effect this major strategic decision has on the platform’s future development itself as well as the respective port and which role data governance arrangements and standards play. ■ SOURCES [1] EPCSA (2011): How To Develop A Port Community System.. 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