Modern digital technologies offer ship operators an effective toolbox for enhancing safety, compliance, and profitability. However, the success of a digital transformation strategy depends on how well it is executed.
The strong execution of digital transformation will lead to increased competitiveness and compliance, but what does that mean? Performance is a relative concept. Performance must be measured against something to carry any form of meaning. Therefore, how well a company is handling the rate of change in digital transformation needs a standard curve, or benchmark, for comparison. This can be internal, measuring performance today against previous performance. But it can also be external, measuring one organisation alongside another.Â
Shipping companies and maritime service providers, especially those under private ownership, might feel resistant to revealing information which could give clues to their performance and competitive positioning. If an investment in a particular digital technology has resulted in a reduction in costs, an increase in profitability, or a significant dividend in time and effort, there might be little reason on the face of it to share this with competitors.
But with collective industry-wide challenges, every company needs to know how to quantify their efforts against their peers to know whether or not they are doing enough, or doing too much. It is this lack of broad industry visibility that prevents ship operators from understanding where they are placed in terms of technology adoption and therefore how competitive their digital transformation strategy is.
Whether benchmarking internally or externally, the question is straightforward: how well is your organisation executing its digital transformation? Is it performing better or worse than expectations? And is it on track to supporting its environmental, social, and governance timeline?
Though benchmarking is critical to tracking progress, it is also critical for understanding where to invest for the highest return on investment. A project that attempts to apply advanced machine learning techniques to an organisation with limited data governance in place will likely fail. Attempting to invest in technologies, processes, or culture that lies beyond your existing maturity level is like investing in a hugely advanced train before laying a single mile of track.
All digital transformation is a means to an end. It is ultimately intended to drive improved performance across a use case or a range of use cases across your organisation. However, your organisation’s ability to deploy digital tools will depend on its maturity.
Some problems will take years of development, investment and stakeholder management to solve. Some problems can be solved by deploying a simple software-as-a-service tool. Not all steps in the digital transformation journey are the same or carry the same weight. It is critical to meet your organisation where it is at, rather than where the leadership believes it should be.
To explore the concept of benchmarking digital transformation in shipping, download our thought leadership report, produced in collaboration with Lloyd’s Register, The Benchmark: Measuring the Progress of Digital Transformation in Ship Operations. This report provides a deep dive into the journey towards digital maturity for maritime businesses. You can download a copy here.
