Are you a Digital Shipping Business....... or do you just spend money on data.

For many shipping businesses, their experience of digitisation looks a lot like the diagram below...

This usually happens because shipping companies have simply "bolted on" data to their existing processes, often making them less, not more, efficient. Data is also available only in silos and cannot be accessed across the whole of the organisation. For example, one shipping line that I have worked with has separate sources of performance data (one auto-logged and one manual) between their Performance Department and their Technical Department. 

For a shipping company to derive real benefit from digitisation, it needs to re-organise itself around the data. Once an organisation has data at its core, this data (both commercial and operational) can be used throughout the organisation to drive better decision making and, ultimately, higher profits. 

For a tanker business, built around real-time data, there are significant benefits both on the commercial/revenue side, as well as the operational/cost side. Real-time data, leads to real-time modelling to enable accurate predictions of voyage profitability, as well as extracting the maximum profit from every voyage, through the most efficient execution.

For a container business, there is added complexity on the commercial/cargo side. However, using real-time data, this complexity can be turned into a massive opportunity. Live data, on both the market demand, and the expected voyage costs, can lead to true yield management. This has had huge benefits in the airline industry and can be expected to do the same in the container industry, especially as the structural over-capacity diminishes.

Many shipping companies are already starting to re-organise themselves to make better use of data. With the advent of "always-on" Fleet Broadband, real-time data in shipping is becoming a reality. This can only be a huge opportunity for those shipping businesses that are ready to take advantage of it.