Maersk Tankers becomes data-driven using Microsoft BI
Insight into countless parameters across the organization with new Microsoft Business Intelligence solution delivered by Kapacity.
In recent years, the oil and gas transportation market has undergone a commercially positive development. At the same time, however, experts anticipate increasing competition in the future. And this is where Maersk Tankers’ journey toward data-driven business activities begins.
“”No loss that can be avoided with timely care should be present”
According to the traditional Maersk practice, Maersk Tankers considers with due diligence that this increasing competition should be tackled with business optimization, the goal of which is to exploit the gold vein – or oil source – of data available to the company and thus to give insight into “the truth”. Maersk Tankers wants to be a data-driven company.
Maersk Tankers started a process where eight possible suppliers were evaluated. These eight suppliers were reduced to three that were to provide a plan for the entire project and give a specific tender for the initial pilot project.
By the end of 2014, Maersk Tankers appointed Kapacity as the supplier of their Business Intelligence solution.
“Kapacity provided a convincing plan for the project, which indeed is rather big. They had been doing a lot of good thinking and it was obvious that, already at an early stage, they had achieved a good understanding of our long-term goals,” says Cecilia Lysemose, Head of Business Intelligence at Maersk Tankers.
The preliminary analysis work was started immediately after the appointment. Kapacity’s Customer Strategy Team participated in the process, helping Maersk Tankers to establish an overview of how to set up the internal organization for the project in order for the process to be supported and driven in the best possible way.
90 years of source systems
Maersk Tankers is a big company and with a history of almost 90 years, it is not surprising that several source systems exist, including Dynamics AX, Dynamics CRM, Master Data Services, as well as quite a few industry-specific solutions for the surveillance and maintenance of the vessels, for instance.
So far, data from the multiple source systems have been collected manually and processed in Excel. This process has been slow and lacked the desired details. Reporting of technical ratios, for instance, has not been feasible until 20 days after a monthly account closure.
With Maersk Tankers’ new solution, this kind of reporting is history.
Insight into countless parameters
LThe solution consists of several subprojects, in which each of the full business matrices has been prepared including information on ratios, cubes, tables, attributes, etc. for each project area. In addition to their check list function, the matrices also contribute to ensuring that the final solutions are uniform and that the concepts are consistent and, where possible, common to the entire organization.
The project has been running since the spring of 2015 and, today, about one half of the subprojects are in operation.
Basically, the subprojects can be divided into solutions focusing on:
- Cost
- Financial Ratios
- The technical operation
- The commercial operation
Human Ressources
Together, the reports provided by the solutions give Maersk Tankers an insight into countless parameters across the organization.
Optimizes operations in virtually all parts of the business
In addition to giving an insight into the financial ratios and KPIs, Maersk Tankers’ solution also gives an insight into the technical and operational data that have a great impact on the company’s bottom line, including:
Calculations of fuel consumption related factors
- Full overview of all of the costs related to a voyage
- Overview of operational measures
- Optimization of voyage planning
Insight into personnel-related data
The above data are just some examples showing the comprehensiveness of Maersk Tankers’ Business Intelligence solution. Once the solution is fully implemented, it will help optimize the operation of almost all the parts of the business – and make Maersk Tankers a data-driven company.
The data ensured by the solution are now updated once a day, making the process much faster and more streamlined. Altogether, we save at least half of the time spent on reporting compared to the previous situation
Cecilia Lysemose, Head of Business Intelligence at Maersk Tankers
Delivered on time and within budget
As stated earlier, Maersk Tankers’ solution is still under development and implementation. Apart from a few adapted estimates due to changed business processes, the first part of the project has been delivered on, or before, the scheduled time, within the agreed budget, and in a very satisfactory quality:
”“All deliveries from Kapacity have been of high quality and have always lived up to our expectations,” says Cecilia Lysemose.
The solution is developed by a dedicated team of five of Kapacity’s consultants, architects, and project managers. The fact that the team is physically situated at Maersk Tankers has a positive impact on the project. Cecilia Lysemose says:
“Having Kapacity’s consultants in-house is a really good thing. Many minor details can be clarified and solved quickly by a short visit to their office”. And Cecilia Lysemose continues: “Furthermore, this set-up minimizes the kind of misunderstanding that often occurs when communicating by e-mail and thereby contributes to the good atmosphere and dialog we maintain with Kapacity”.
About Maersk Tankers
Maersk Tankers is the owner and operator of a big fleet of tank vessels that are all constructed and operated according to the highest quality and reliability standards. Maersk Tankers bought its first dedicated tank vessel in 1928 and the fleet has been expanded and improved ever since. Today, Maersk Tankers’ tank vessel fleet is one of the biggest in the world.
Maersk Tankers is represented worldwide with 260 employees on land and 3,500 employees at sea. Its fleet includes about 100 vessels.
Maersk Tankers is part of the Mærsk Group; the head office is located in Copenhagen. The group has a staff of more than 88,000 people in about 130 countries.
