With a myriad of separate systems and processes at play, planning and executing a commercial voyage is a complex task. The traditional approach to commercial voyage management is often riddled with difficulties and inefficiencies. In most scenarios, it acts as a major weakness in maintaining a tight Profit & Loss (P&L) for the voyage.
This web of complexities arises from the countless disparate processes and systems critical for both pre-fixture and post-fixture voyage planning and execution. This approach frequently causes teams to work in silos. Often, the business process is outsourced to different service providers, which impedes effective communication and collaboration.
Adwit Gosain, Business Development Manager at Geoserve told Thetius that he has observed a huge disconnect between departments of a business. “We have people with commercial knowledge and people with technical knowledge but they sometimes think in a single direction. They think about what impacts them individually, rather than the organisation as a whole. This happens because there is so much going on and so much to do. There might be a few tasks that get pushed under the carpet because one department might consider them less important than others, but actually, the impact of getting these tasks done correctly could be huge. They might significantly impact another department and the entire organisation’s bottom line.”
This isolation fosters operational inefficiencies, is prone to errors, and places a significant burden on vessel operators. When challenges arise, making changes becomes costly and time-consuming and generates unnecessary workloads. The vast variety of systems involved typically causes individuals and processes to operate in isolation, leading to operational inefficiencies, errors, and adverse impacts such as increased fuel consumption, financial losses, and potential loss of reputation and goodwill for the organisation.
Typically, traditional approaches to voyage management do not make use of the integrated systems that are available today. Access to real-time data and advanced data analytics is often limited. This leads to a reactive rather than proactive decision-making process. This is largely tied to the fact that it’s hard to make informed decisions from data when it is locked up in different systems and not readily accessible. Jasneet Manaise, Senior Vice President, Marine Services & Performance Management at Fairfield Chemical Carriers, told us, “One of the biggest challenges has always been the aggregation of good quality data to drive decision-making and change. You have to make do with what you have but end up making changes or calibrating your decisions along the way.” The high level of noise in the data makes it prone to human error.
This fragmented approach to commercial voyage management means that rather than optimising the entire voyage lifecycle, it only focuses on optimising specific processes or segments individually. Failing to identify the impact one decision might have on another aspect of the voyage or the performance of the vessel can lead to unexpected financial loss in the voyage.
This siloed approach to data storage means that it has to be manually moved to share, process, and be analysed by other systems and people to create actionable insights. However, this is time-consuming, risky, and prone to human error. Accidental file deletion, difficulties for software to read the data, or the risks of its loss during transmission or processing are exacerbated. A study by Forrester Consulting found that employees in large organisations lose up to 12 hours per week chasing data.
Decisions based on incomplete or poor-quality information can lead to inefficiencies, ultimately affecting a vessel’s profitability. It’s essential to understand the relationships between these potential factors for making optimal routing and speed decisions, which are crucial for reducing fuel consumption and costs. The bottlenecks of voyage management today can be better understood by diving into the processes, people, and systems.
For a more detailed understanding and exploration of the topics covered in this article, refer to our latest report, Charting a Profitable Course: Achieving Excellence in Commercial Voyage Management, commissioned by GeoServe.
You can download the full report below:
