Using Data In The Maritime Industry—Our Re-Cap Of NYMIC’s Meet-Up

Last week, Nautilus attended a meet-up, hosted by the NYMIC (New York Maritime Innovation Center) on “Connecting the dots: Using data in the maritime industry” at New Lab in Brooklyn Navy Yard. After touring the venue, which supports over 150 startups in 84k square feet of space, Chris Clott, Director and Co-Founder of NYMIC, introduced the moderator of the panel, Petere Miner, Co-Founder and President of CoLoadX.

Petere Miner introduced the panel:

• George Sanchez and Mathew Hernandez, Customer Success Managers at Xeneta, an ocean and air freight rate benchmarking and market analytics platform

• Pierre Laguerre, Founder and CEO of Fleeting, a startup that matches carriers and drivers based on their preferences

• Marco Gires, Chief Data Scientist at ClearMetal, software that continuously plans inventory and resolves transportation exceptions

• Ramiro Gonzalez, 3rd Party Ecosystem Manager at TradeLens, a joint venture of IBM and Maersk to digitize the global supply chain

Not just in maritime, but in many industries, we’re seeing a massive amount of data being captured. “About 90% of the data that exists today was created within the past two years,” explained TradeLens’s Ramiro Gonzalez. But most of the data is captured in an unstructured way, that doesn’t provide the right insights to the right people. He continued, that “most of the data that exists today lives in organizational silos.” 

That data is going to waste. Organizations of all types need to share data with their partners, across other departments, and in a secure way to drive meaningful collaboration.

But most companies store and manage their data in different formats; different information in different areas. “Generally speaking, the data tells the same story but in completely different languages,” added Xeneta’s George Sanchez. 

At Nautilus, we’ve similarly noted that disconnected teams—working off different systems and different data—make disconnected decisions, and ultimately leave money on the table. Part of our core mission is to break these silos and drive collaboration, transparency, and accountability.

Even though some companies are still resistant to gathering and sharing their data with a software provider, most organizational departments, today, are looking for efficient and automated solutions that provide the exact insights they need to make better decisions. “With access to real-time information [...] they [shipping companies] are going to be able to plan those assets more accordingly [...] and just be more efficient in how they run their businesses,” explained Ramiro Gonzalez. 

Decision-makers are not looking for every single, granular data point, but they do need actionable insights and alerts. 

Another big topic at NYMIC’s meet-up was standardization. “Do we need to come up with a standardization around data in maritime,” was asked by moderator Petere Miner. The panelists agreed on the importance to have standards in place, whether the industry at-large is ready to define those standards immediately. Ramiro Gonzalez pointed out the DCSA (Digital Container Shipping Association) which was founded in April by container giants Maersk, Hapag-Lloyd, MSC, and ONE, and has since been joined by companies like CMA CGM, Evergreen, and Yang Ming. The goal of DCSA is to work on digital standards in the container shipping industry. 

During the Q&A, someone asked a poignant question often asked by decision-makers at shipping companies “What’s the ROI?” And, what’s the shape of that ROI: value, money, time, or the efficiency of processes? For each of the panelists,  it all comes down to providing true value to clients. And that can be achieved in myriad ways, if naturally—at the end of the day—the value they receive is greater than their investment. For shipping owner/operators this could look like maximizing their TCE rates, reducing fuel consumption, cutting emissions, or connecting teams and driving collaboration.

We’d like to thank Chris Clott and NYMIC for a very generous and insightful meet-up as we connected with different players across logistics and supporting industries.

By Vanessa Roettger, Marketing

As a maritime tech company, Nautilus’ goal is to build products that solve problems for our clients in an intuitive and useful way. Our team is constantly developing, refining, and providing new updates, features, modules, and analytics for a unified view that helps owner/operators make stronger, more competitive decisions. 

Nautilus Labs is the leading fleet optimization software that leverages machine learning to help owner/operators across segments understand their vessels’ consumption behavior under any given weather, sea state or vessel condition, and fuel type. We’re building artificial intelligence to advance the efficiency of ocean commerce.