Case study: Wallenius Wilhelmsen — one inspection platform across a global survey partner network

Bison Grid is the maritime quality and claims management platform for finished vehicle logistics — the system of record for vehicle condition across multi-handover chains. Wallenius Wilhelmsen standardised on the Bison Grid platform across its third-party survey partner network, giving inspection teams in different regions, on different processes and connectivity, one consistent way to capture vehicle condition and photo evidence.

The challenge

Vehicle inspections were being carried out by a global network of third-party survey partners. Each partner worked to its own processes, in its own region, often in environments with limited or unreliable connectivity. The result was inconsistent inspection data and photo evidence reaching the teams that depend on it — making it harder to defend damage claims, reconcile condition across handovers, and meet OEM reporting requirements consistently across the network.

The solution

Wallenius Wilhelmsen standardised on the Bison Grid platform across the survey partner network, giving every partner the same inspection system regardless of region or process. Two capabilities made the rollout work in the field:

• Offline capability. Inspectors capture VINs, vehicle condition and photo evidence on the native Bison App — on iOS and Android — without a connection. Records sync when the device is back online, so inspections in compounds, on quaysides and at sea are never blocked by connectivity.
• Multi-language support. Partners across different regions work in their own language against one shared data structure, so the inspection record is consistent no matter who captured it or where.

Because every partner submits into the same platform, condition data and timestamped, photo-backed evidence land in one consistent structure — ready for claims and quality teams to use, and for browser-based access where app installation isn’t practical.

Data quality built in

Standardising on one platform only pays off if the data every partner submits can be trusted. Bison Grid keeps the vehicle’s identity right at the point of capture — across the whole network — so the records reaching claims and quality teams are consistent and verifiable.

• VIN review check, with make & model. Every scanned VIN is checked automatically — by check-digit where the region enforces it, or by reviewing the scan photo where it doesn’t. Make and model are read straight from the VIN against an authoritative vehicle knowledge base, filling blank fields and queuing anything questionable for a reviewer. A flagged VIN is held back from partner (EDI) export until it is resolved, then released automatically once cleared — so bad VINs never reach your partners.
• Barcode scan check. When a scan is imperfect, the platform re-reads the vehicle’s barcode and cross-references earlier clean scans of the same vehicle to recover the correct VIN before anyone has to step in. On-the-spot field validation stops malformed records being submitted in the first place.
• Unit journey & inspection history. Every vehicle has its own unit view with a full journey timeline — each inspection event across the supply chain, from preload through discharge, gate-out and delivery, on one screen with the location, damage count, and flags such as newly identified damage, alongside a map of where the unit has been. Claims teams can see at a glance whether discharge found damage that preload did not, without comparing PDFs by hand — and a read-only activity log with original-and-corrected VIN retention gives them a defensible audit trail across handovers.

The result

Inspection data and photo evidence now arrive in a consistent form from every partner in the network. That consistency does two things: it gives claims and quality teams evidence-grade documentation to defend damage disputes — with the potential to reduce claims costs — and it supports reporting against OEM requirements consistently across the network rather than partner by partner.

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Defend every claim. Document every handover.

Bison Grid is the maritime quality and claims management platform for finished vehicle logistics, built by the same engineering team since 2003 — twenty-three years of operational provenance. Web SaaS plus the native Bison App on iOS and Android, with full offline capability for field operations.

Get the Bison App on the Apple App Store and Google Play Store.