Digital Transformation In A Shipping Company - People First ! - Digital ... What ? 1/3
Marco Wetzel
Regional Digital Manager North Europe at Hapag-Lloyd AG | Co-Organizer of #UniteToFight2024 | Driving Change in Digital Spaces & Global Health Awareness
After various discussions with a lot of stakeholders in our industry, I have decided to write a short series of articles about the digital transformation in a shipping company. I can hear you scream already: "Not another article about technology". No it's not !
This series focus on people in our industry who are not dreaming about Blockchain, VR, AR, contextualized data, smart data or whatsoever every night. As with all my articles, I will use an informal tone, set some challenging hypotheses and easy to understand words. This series is to give you some food for thoughts if you consider the digital transformation of your business, or if you already on your mission but you may feel some struggle with the implementation. So I am here to give you some ideas how to move forward.
These articles are not the holy grail of the right way to do things, it's more to give you some inspiration around the digital transformation.
"Digital ... what ?"
Let's define some buzz words first
Before we go ahead let's quickly define what's the difference between "digitisation" and "digital transformation". That's clear for you ? Then jump to the next block. But for a lot of people outside our "digital bubble" it's not that clear.
Digitisation: The digitisation, per definition, describes the change of a format from analog to digital. One of the best examples I heard of is the comparison between a classical letter and e-mails. Another example of our industry is the comparison of paper charts and ENCs (electronical navigational chart). Or the change from an paper logbook to an electronical logbook. I guess you got the concept. So when we use the word "digitization" we focus mainly on a format change.
Digital Transformation: On the other side we have the term "Digital Transformation". When we speak about transformation, we focus on a continuous change management process. So the transformation focus on people, how we think, how we work together, how we solve problems, how we innovate. Having said this, you see already the impact of a transformation is much bigger and it starts with people and culture. Fancy software solutions comes much later and these are only one result of our change process.
"It starts end ends with people"
In my opinion, a digitisation strategy is not really effective, not to say useless without a proper digital transformation strategy. However a lot of people are trying it. You see it every day in our industry. A lot of companies have IT departments and IT managers, only a few companies have CDO positions. If you follow me and my definitions above, you can already see that the skillset of an IT manager is maybe less useful to lead a transformation. However the IT department should be the ally of your "Digital Team" and maybe a part of it. But this is also true for all other departments of your shipping company. This will be covered in the next article.
"Digital bubble" - Who is still with us ?
My wife recently was searching for a pen to write something on a small piece of paper. So she went to my office room and was searching for pen. 10 Minutes later she came into the living room and said in a baffled mode " Hell yeah, you are really digital". What happened ? Sure she found not a single pen in my room. One year ago I banned all pens out of my office. I had simply no need anymore. Isn't it awesome ? Maybe. Maybe not. The point is here that we have to take care of our people, who are not so familiar with all these things or who simply don't want it to these extents. If we go ahead with a certain speed and we don't look back, we can lose somebody and this could lead to a social conflict.
"Please note more digital stuff"
Big changes, as always, will create emotions and feelings to all directions. Some people will flourish while other people will fear the changes. You will recognize this fear, for example, when people show resistance or become quiet.
This is leading us directly to one of the most critical points. When we speak about the digital transformation we need to speak about the culture. A culture change is essential to run a successful transformation. Additionally, we must define a clear purpose and vision of our transformation. The mission will be the way. We will go more deeply into this the next articles.
So, I am not here to convince all of you to become digital natives, however I want to present some ideas that may help you to think about how to make your shipping company future ready to manage our industry challenges. One thing is clear, you may don't like all these things, you may don't need all of them, but certainly you have to transform your business to some extent to keep up. It's not a sprint, it's a marathon.
"Course set"
What's next ?
The intention of the first part have been to set the right expectations, clarify some definitions, give you some examples but also highlight the fact that's not a one man show and it's not done by implementing a new piece of software.
In the next article, I will focus on how to kick off a digital transformation in the shipping company and what things you may should consider in your planning. Here we will set the focus on the culture, roles and responsibilities.
If I was able to create some curiosity, watch out for my next article. If you think your boss, your friend or a colleague should give it a read, please make sure you follow me on LinkedIn.
Stay tuned !
PS: Comments are always welcome
A Seasoned Newbie at Yang Ming Italy's Marketing Dept. - Maritime digital transformation enthusiast, never stop learning, always hungry for new challenges. #creativeshipping
3 年"It's not a sprint, it's a marathon." I couldn't agree more. The biggest challenge is more up to culture than to technical tools. A great read, Marco! I can't wait for the next articles.