The upheaval of the past few years has created an existentially challenging environment for the companies that keep trade moving.
Ship owners, operators, and charterers face several complex market factors, including increased global conflict, new and lasting volatility in market rates, increased fuel prices, the new normal of supply chain congestion, an increased risk of global conflict, and new demands being placed on them by their customers, financial institutions, and regulators.
Organisations are under pressure to meet these priorities whilst remaining profitable – and when the pace of change is now so rapid and radical, it can no longer be ignored, reports Ship Technology.
Driving the green transition
Decarbonisation is the highest item on the global trade agenda and is an increasingly important factor in maritime organisations’ decision-making process. Pressure is mounting for industry stakeholders to take decisive action to start reducing carbon emissions and meet the IMO’s target of 40% emissions reduction by 2030.
Industry players must grapple with making changes that drive the green transition, while also balancing a myriad of other priorities.
This encompasses everything from making well-informed pre-chartering decisions – maximising operational efficiency while ensuring compliance and minimising emissions – to controlling costs to deal with growing inflation and higher fuel prices.
While building more efficient vessels and implementing alternative fuels will have a huge part to play in decarbonising shipping, both are costly, long-term options.
What is clear is that the industry no longer has time to wait. Organisations need solutions that drive immediate change and also enable them to remain profitable while navigating the transition to greener operations.
This is where digital technologies – and particularly data – can take a new and central role in creating a shared reality to join-up stakeholders across an organisation. This enables them to align their varying priorities when making decisions and ensure that any decision-making reflects their obligations to protect both profit and planet.
Creating a shared reality
Data holds the key to smarter, more sustainable decision-making, in tandem with software platforms that are able to interpret the information and provide actionable insights.
In a time where shipping organisations must contend with a growing number of often-conflicting strategic priorities, data insights can help underpin decision-making and align stakeholders from across the business to ensure differing goals can be transparently and measurably met.
With the maturity of today’s technology and the availability of data, this is achievable in situations where humans would find it nearly impossible to gain the same results.
Insights from this data can be used to identify areas within the business where operations can be optimised, which can significantly reduce emissions as well as drive cost efficiencies that have a positive impact on companies’ bottom lines.
In this way, businesses are able to benefit both profit and planet and these savings could also be reinvested back into initiatives that drive the green transition. Aligning commercial and environmental goals is made much easier by data-driven connected platforms.
These solutions can bring together data from across a business, breaking down silos to create a shared reality between different stakeholders. This can enhance collaboration, as access to the same data points enables enhanced accuracy, visibility and context, bringing industry players together to make more informed decisions on vessel activities and goals.
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Source: Ship Technology
