In the 14 months since he moved to Amsterdam as the founding CEO of the Digital Container Shipping Association (DCSA), Thomas Bagge has been to the bank just once. It’s a point he makes by way of showing the path liner shipping is on to make booking a box a far more simple, online experience.
Bagge, a 13-year Maersk man prior to his DCSA appointment, is the latest high profile name in the ongoing Maritime CEO Tech Leader Series sponsored by Dualog. The episode, produced by Ocean Technologies Group, centres around what carriers are doing to go digital and how so many archaic shipping practices should be consigned to the history books.
Bagge said carriers must aspire to get to the digital levels banks have done.
“The example I like to use is personal travel and banking, which has got so easy these days. Why shouldn’t we have the same vision for container shipping?” Bagge questioned.
Explaining where he believes the biggest digital advances can be made in liner shipping, Bagge said the focus should be on documentation, something his association has been busy tackling all year.
“I think the biggest gain is on the documentation side, the carriers have done a lot on the operational side, but from the customer experience, container shipping is still not great compared to other industries,” Bagge said.
Founded in April last year, the DCSA features the world’s nine largest carriers.
Watch out next week as the TV show returns with a look at how the business of chartering is changing.
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This whole arena has been bogged down for decades with a plethora of bespoke company and supplier IT systems that don’t speak to each other easily, quickly and on a cost effective basis. The shipping industry plus road and rail transport all need to get up to the same sort of position as the banks (most of them) and think through the customer/shipper’s needs/requirements plus the gains that can be achieved by simpler, faster and more accurate data/documentation. The ability to update, modify and change neds to be wrapped around by more than adequate security measures.