The maritime shipping industry generates roughly 120 million data points every single day and 43.8 billion data points each year. To put it into perspective: if each data point were awarded a length of one inch, that’s enough data to circle the world at the equator nearly 28 times. It truly is an incredible amount of data.

As we know, the quality, timeliness, and usability of this data really matters to organizations on both sides of the marine contract. For instance, a relatively small 5% error in fuel data and calculations can lead to the loss of more than $280,000 per year, per vessel.

So how can organizations best optimize their data intelligence strategy to unlock relevant, timely insights and overcome obstacles such as data entry errors, poor visibility, market volatility, stakeholder fragmentation due to unique requirements and roles, and many other challenges and changes?

To demonstrate how to transform maritime shipping data into better business decisions, we recently hosted an insightful webinar, “From Data to Action: Surfacing Key Insights Throughout the Maritime Workflow.” To view the webinar on-demand, click here.

In the meantime, here are five key steps to making data work for you:

Standardization

Standardization is a critical first step in any organization’s data journey. To derive any kind of meaningful insights from our data, we must first standardize it for analysis. Unfortunately, many maritime organizations have incomplete, non-standardized data that resides in disparate systems.

Data standardization must be addressed among your historical data, as you collect new data, and as you transmit data between systems for analysis:

  • One of the best ways to improve future performance is to evaluate and learn from past performance, which is why access to a holistic, standardized view of historical data that updates over time is so important.
  • For the collection of new data, continuity, connectivity, and consistency are key. Make sure that your core commercial system is cloud-native and web browser-based, that your maritime workflows are captured and managed in the same collaborative workspace, and that you are tracking data in a systematic and repeatable way across your organization.
  • Finally, the flow of data across systems is crucial for standardized, accessible data. Ensure your fundamental internal systems, such as ERPs, CTRMs, and corporate accounting systems, are interconnected. In addition, incorporate other desired third-party solutions into your technology ecosystem by leveraging trusted APIs that are flexible and secure.

Integration

Integration refers to the process of bringing together data from all parts of your organization and the industry at-large within one system. Whether it’s operational data from vessels or pricing data from global market indices, integrating relevant information into your commercial system of choice is a key step in unlocking the value of your data.

Businesses around the world understand the importance of system and data integrations:

  • As of 2020, more than 80% of business operations leaders indicated that data integration is critical to their ongoing operations.
  • That same survey revealed that 67% of enterprises are relying on data integrations to support their analytics and business platforms.
  • Here at Veson, roughly 80% of our client community integrates with at least one other system or data source, from weather and bunker price feeds to turnkey integrations with hand-selected industry partners through the Veson Partner Network.

Acceleration

Now that our data is standardized and integrated in one place, we must streamline the transformation of that data into meaningful insights. We refer to this step as acceleration, as it determines an organization’s ability to interpret data in a timely and agile fashion.

What determines the success of this step?

  • First is strong reporting capabilities. Make sure that you have the strategic tools you need to quickly access meaningful insights through a wide range of in-depth reports pulled directly from your commercial system.
  • Second is the ability to build custom reports on the fly as needed, which gives you the flexibility to decide what specific insights you’d like to surface.
  • And third is the ability to automatically generate reports at a defined cadence, then distribute them to the relevant stakeholders.

Nothing can impede the effort of building buy-in within your organization quite like an inflexible or burdensome report building function, especially as your users seek insights that enhance efficiency instead of hindering it.

Contextualization

Data without context is data without value. That’s why contextualization of data is the next critical step in our journey. Contextualization refers to the process of surfacing relevant data where and when they matter most in your workflow. It puts data at the fingertips of key stakeholders, enabling them to enhance decision-making.

A great way to contextualize your data is through a dynamic business intelligence dashboard tool. Additionally, if your core commercial system offers automated tasks and alerts based on configurable business rules, such as defined voyage P&L tolerances or voyage schedule delays, you can set this up across your organization for timely decision support. This capability can really elevate how you prioritize action items and surface relevant insights at key points throughout the workflow, grounding every decision in data.

Utilization

Finally, true transformation through data hinges upon a final step: utilization. Utilization refers to the practice of harnessing data to make meaningful changes within your organization and then measuring those changes over time to continuously improve.

A huge piece of successful utilization is choosing systems and tools that are right for your business, implementing them with great care and knowledgeable expertise, and putting continuous learning opportunities in place to go on optimizing workflows and implementing best practices over time.

The success of any data journey is contingent on these key factors, which is why we at Veson Nautical do what we do. We work with our clients throughout these crucial steps to ensure they are equipped with the tools and support they need to turn their data into action. To learn more about how VIP empowers data-driven decisions through robust reporting capabilities, flexible connections with other systems and data sources, and access to all your historical data, watch the on-demand webinar below.