Chartplanner: 20 Years of Revolutionizing Maritime Navigation

Twenty years ago, we launched Chartplanner, a software solution designed to simplify and enhance the management of electronic charts and nautical publication licenses. What began as a vision to empower maritime professionals, has grown into an essential tool, continuously evolving to anticipate and adapt to the developments in the field and customer needs.

Chartplanner’s legacy is built on its ability to address the complex needs of vessels while ensuring compliance, efficiency, and reliability. It has become the backbone of our digital services for maritime navigation, supporting the industry’s shift toward digitalization.

What makes Chartplanner unique

In the last 20 years Chartplanner has evolved from a online catalogue to the backbone of all of our services and software that is crucial on board of every ship. What stayed the same, is our focus on simplicity, we create solutions that fit your needs as a customer. We co-create with you to create the best fitting solution for all our customers. We know what we are talking about, our in-house development team makes it possible to react fast to changes in the market and in your needs. 

A Journey through the years: Chartplanner’s Evolution

Chartplanner1: Laying the foundation (2004)

Upon the introduction in 2004, Chartplanner was the first fully automatic 24/7 online ENC service in the world.  This first version provided maritime professionals with an innovative way to directly access digital charts and publications.

Chartplanner 2: Expanding functionality

Chartplanner 2 introduced enhanced capabilities with the NTM module, the Notice to Mariners module. From now on, mariners had access to all updates for paper charts. Maximizing compliancy on board.

Chartplanner 3: Modernizing the UI of the platform

Chartplanner 3 was introduced with a much simpler and cleaner interface. The focus for the development of Chartplanner3 was modernizing the user interface of Chartplanner. The platform became much more user friendly, easier to use and focused on simplicity. Less is More was one of the guiding principles in this process.

Chartplanner 4: Setting the standard

The most versatile and advanced version to date, Chartplanner4 caters to the increasing digital demands of the maritime sector. In this stage Chartplanner transformed into a fully integrated software in which all services of Datema came together. Examples are digital logbooks (DLog), the DBookshelf, and an Medic integration. This created one dashboard in which the crew has access to all services in one place. One dashboard, from which everything can be easily accessed and updated. The focus of Chartplanner4 really laid on maximizing compliancy on board. 

Chartplanner 5: A Glimpse into the future

Scheduled for release in mid-2025, Chartplanner 5 is designed to redefine maritime navigation once again. In this version Chartplanner is evolving towards voyage planning software. 

The first step will be to provide access to the actual ENC data in Chartplanner, through the ENCViewer. And to include several new services such as: 

• Port Pro (Digital Port Arrival solution),
• Medic Usage (keeping track of usage of medicines and ordering directly from CP),
• Dripfeed (Realtime updates)
• Pick report function (to display additional ENC information

It doesn't stop here. In Chartpanner5 we work towards voyage planning, integrated weather warnings, GPS integrations and Emission tracking. 

Do you want to be part of our pilot phase and think along with future developments of Chartplanner? Please let us know. We are happy to incorporate your wishes and get your view.