In October, we explored four key stakeholders on the owner-operator side of maritime shipping contracts. Our first post addressed the metrics they rely upon to do their jobs efficiently and effectively, while our second post highlighted their interconnected workflows. Today, we’re shifting our focus to the other side of the marine contract.

Just as metrics bring data to life for key stakeholders on the owner-operator side of the contract, they also prove invaluable for stakeholders within the world’s leading tonnage charterers. These metrics are instrumental in providing the insight that today’s seaborne supply chain so desperately needs. In fact, the majority of global businesses say they do not have adequate visibility into their supply chain across modalities, and 82% of maritime professionals believe their industry needs to improve its visibility.

With that, let’s take a closer look at the metrics that mean the most to four primary maritime shipping stakeholders among tonnage charterers and commodities traders: Production Planners, Marine Logistics Professionals, Dock Schedulers, and VPs of Supply Chain.

Production Planners

Coordinating the input and output plant runs required to keep production moving demands a clear line of sight into cargo movements. To secure that visibility, Production Planners rely upon metrics that provide them insight into fixtures, deliver detailed historical summaries, and offer complete cargo handling information. Some of the metrics they need include:

  • General Operations Report: By gaining insight into the status of both past and scheduled voyages, Production Planners can align internal processes to prepare for incoming feed stocks.
  • Port Schedule: Production Planners can review, in near-real-time, which vessels are calling at specific locations.

Marine Logistics Professionals

Marine Logistics Professionals are responsible for a diverse range of responsibilities: from making informed nominations decisions to overseeing voyages, containing seaborne supply chain costs, and continuously communicating with internal and external stakeholders to ensure the needs of the business are met. The metrics and insights that empower them to manage their multifaceted function more efficiently and effectively include:

  • Vessel Position Report: This filterable report includes both essential fixture data and up-to-date itinerary data for each active and scheduled voyage. It is instrumental in supporting Marine Logistics Professionals as they perform key voyage planning activities.
  • Port Expenses Summary: This filterable report includes both estimated and actual port expenses for all voyages, enabling Marine Logistics Professionals to review precise cost details related to port operations.
  • Voyage P&L Summary: This filterable report displays a summary of detailed voyage P&L figures across either all voyages or subsets of voyages as specified by Marine Logistics Professionals.

Dock Schedulers

Dock Schedulers must closely monitor and manage berth activities in order to contain costs and prevent negative downstream impacts. In order to do so, they rely upon metrics that provide full visibility into berth activities and enable them to assess and improve effectiveness over time. Some of the metrics that empower them to work and plan more effectively include:

  • End of Shift Updates: As the baton is passed from one shift to another, this up-to-date view of activities and events that took place throughout a shift provides the incoming team with everything they need to maintain continuity at port.
  • Activity Times & Variances: An overview of actual activity times and their variances from estimated activity times enables dock schedulers to pinpoint activities that are taking longer than planned and fine-tune their projections in the future.
  • Laytime & Variances: Finally, assessing laytime and any unplanned variances is key to surfacing the drivers of costly back-ups and, where possible, mitigating those back-ups through more effective planning.

VPs of Supply Chain

Thanks to its complicated workflows and vast scale, the marine modality represents disproportionately high costs and disappointingly low visibility for many tonnage charterers and commodities traders. In order to understand and optimize the movement of seaborne cargo and its associated costs, VPs of Supply Chain require access to metrics that enable them to assess performance and reveal opportunities for greater efficiency. Some of the metrics that mean the most to these supply chain leaders include:

  • Terminal Efficiency: With a lens into terminal activities, supply chain leaders can evaluate the efficiency of their high-activity terminals and compare terminal operations across their entire organization.
  • Mark-to-Market Performance: Combining actual voyage costs with external price feeds, mark-to-market performance analyses enable supply chain leaders to assess the cost-effectiveness of each voyage against the market at large.
  • Demurrage Root Cause: This report not only provides a diverse range of demurrage-related information, such as cause, duration, accounting data, amounts, and more; it also includes an invaluable root cause analysis. These powerful insights can enable supply chain leaders to shape procedures and initiatives that reduce costly demurrage in the future.
  • Cost & Margin Analysis Across Business Lines: Ultimately, supply chain leaders desire an understanding of seaborne supply chain costs across the commodities they produce or trade. This requires them to aggregate seaborne costs and assess their impact on margin for each business line.

Many Stakeholders, One Commercial Platform

As a dynamic platform for the commercial management of marine cargo and fleets, the Veson IMOS Platform (VIP) provides a suite of flexible tools that key stakeholders on both sides of the marine contract can utilize to make informed and proactive decisions. VIP pairs proven business logic with an agile, cloud-based architecture that supports the secure access, advanced data sharing, and seamless integration required by today’s maritime shipping ecosystem. To discover how VIP can empower the many users in your business, view the on-demand Many Users, One Platform webinar at the link below.