Despite recent significant investment in maritime digital technology, many organisations still rely on fragmented systems and email-driven workflows. While these tools may work, they create structural weaknesses that increase risk and limit learning over time. This insight analyses how reliance on email and disconnected systems creates inefficiency, limits learning, and increases operational risk.
Despite the significant investment in technology over the past decade, many shipping companies are still operating with highly fragmented systems and toolsets. The use of email and spreadsheets persists because of their universal use, rather than being ideal systems.
In an environment where systems are unevenly deployed and connectivity varies, traditional tools become the lowest-risk option, even when it creates long-term complexity.
Erkut Denizci, Assistant Fleet Manager, International Tanker Management explained the reliance on fragmented tools, stating, “shipping still relies on very old ways of exchanging and storing information. Email and spreadsheets are everywhere, but they are mainly used for record-keeping, not for analysis or learning. Over time, that makes it very hard to understand trends or improve performance.”
Commercial negotiations, chartering decisions, operational updates, claims communications, and performance reporting often take place across separate systems, with email still acting as the part which unites them.
As a result, important information ends up scattered across inboxes, attachments, shared drives, and spreadsheets and is often duplicated or outdated. Dependence on inboxes creates a daily operational burden that teams quietly absorb through workarounds.
Ha Eun Ruppelt, with over 20 years of commercial operations experience, expanded on this, explaining how “it takes her about half an hour just to delete useless emails so the computer has enough space to download new ones. In shipping, we’re very good at finding workarounds because we don’t have time for perfect solutions; everything is firefighting”.
Everyday communication tools like Outlook or Gmail play a central role in the sector’s fragmentation. While email remains effective for general correspondence, it was never designed to handle the high volumes of messages, time-critical operational workflows, or the structured reuse of data required by maritime teams.
“Email is a great communication tool, but it’s not suitable for complex operational tasks that need follow-ups, visibility, and accountability. We rely on it because it’s familiar, not because it works well,” said Erkut Denizci.
As long as inboxes act as the default coordination layer, organisations will struggle to create reliable systems of record, no matter how many downstream tools they deploy.
Download ‘Future-Ready Shipping: The importance of strong digital foundations’ commissioned by Sedna, and discover how shipping companies can move from fragmented, inbox-reliant workflows to resilient, data-driven operations.
