Operational and commercial data are often treated as by-products of daily activity rather than strategic assets. However, without structured governance, shared standards, and clear ownership, shipping companies limit their ability to learn, adapt, and future-proof their operations.
This insight highlights why data ownership, governance, and standardisation are essential for learning, compliance, and long-term competitiveness.
Operational and commercial data are often seen as by-products of operations rather than as a strategic resource. A central structural barrier to digital progress is the lack of shared industry data standards.
Erkut Denizci, Assistant Fleet Manager, International Tanker Management, provided operational context: “The same incidents keep happening again and again, like technical failures, safety issues, insurance cases. Even when we analyse root causes, there is no real structure to store those learnings and make sure they are applied in the future.”
Without common approaches and clear definitions, it is difficult to connect systems or scale digital programmes. As Kris Vedat, CEO of SmartSea, explained, “aviation and automotive standardised their data decades ago. That’s why they’re ten years ahead of maritime in digitalisation. Standardisation makes it far easier to deploy systems, share information, and collaborate.”
This gap is particularly visible in areas like safety and maintenance, where shared data could help deliver benefits. Kris Vedat continued, “Safety data is not standardised in maritime. Each operator collects it on their own. In automotive, by law, companies share safety data.”
Shipping companies often work with only part of the picture they require as a result. Meaning, they rely on their own experiences, rather than being able to tap into a wider collective insight.
With important company information residing in inboxes, spreadsheets, and shared folders with limited structure or governance, maritime efficiency is not tapping into its full digital potential. Access depends on individuals rather than systems, and knowledge can be lost when people move roles.
There are risks when vendors control how data is stored, accessed, and exported. If information cannot be easily retrieved, reused, or combined across systems, organisational learning and adaptability can suffer.
Companies need to treat data as a central business asset. This shift also requires clarity around who is responsible for the data once it exists inside the organisation.
“Companies should treat data as a strategic asset and a source of learning, adaptation, and innovation in both services and customer value propositions. But that only works when data ownership is clear and explicit across the organisation. Many companies can source unlimited data, however the hard is to build the bigger picture, to unlock the potential,” said Lars Lomholt, Business Transformation/PMO Manager at Uni-Tankers.
This requires a shift in mindset, meaning companies should consider data as something to be owned by them and structured for reuse, and accessible under clear governance.
Without this shift, shipping companies remain locked into fragmented tools, forced to react rather than anticipate, and increasingly constrained by their own systems.
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.
