MAERSK LINE CASE
WHEN SPEAKING WITH TOO MANY TONGUES STAND IN THE WAY OF ABSOLUTE EFFICIENCY
TAKING ON WORLD DOMINANCE
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n 2010, Maersk Line decided to redefine their market position to do nothing less but to challenge the entire shipping industry. Not because their position was threatened, not because they were sacking behind, but because they saw a potential for bringing value back into the industry. And so, all sails were set to conquer the position as the world’s leading carrier. Why not? A full and clear overview of Maersk Line’s market position and priorities was essential to be able to act and use resources efficiently. This may sound as an easy task, but was not entirely so. Generating a global overview as well as local transparency on shippers, volumes and key market differentiators are by no means trivial. And as a result, Maersk Line’s sales, trade and marketing divisions across the globe worked from their best picture of the market, but they were not always sufficiently aligned to match the insights needed for an efficient global approach. “Several times over the past 10 years, we have tried to develop a segmentation model that could be adopted operationally in our organisation and guide priorities and focus, but we have never succeeded in doing so. It has been a rather frustrating situation for us to not be able to give a clear picture to our local organisations and, more importantly, knowing that immense sales potentials were left untapped” Thomas Gullacksen, head of segmentation in Maersk Line, explains.
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o fully comprehend the challenges of this task, it is important to understand the complexity at hand. Maersk Line is the world’s largest shipping company, operating in 130 countries, with a work force of more than 25,000 employees, a fleet of about 650 container ships and 15 million containers transported annually across the globe. In addition, they deal with regional and national regulations and cultural differences as well as large differences in the availability of quality market data. The need for a common language and a clear market overview was indisputable, and so Maersk Line changed their approach to gain the necessary organisational alignment and buy-in. This time it worked. “Efficient management requires good communication, and good communication requires a common language. In order to be able to prioritise and focus our resources across departments and geographies in the organisation, we needed an aligned and clear view on our market structure and opportunities. And not least to actually agree on this in the entire organisation,” Thomas explains.
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I think what finally did the trick was the involvement of a large part of the organisation from the very beginning. With a project group including all commercial departments as well as the local sales organisation, we created a new segmentation model based on an open and widespread dialogue with all major stakeholders. After the model was created, we did thorough proof of concept in the local organisation and made the necessary adaptions to the model to make it work at a local level. To make the model self-sustainable even after the project close, five pilot implementations were executed on four continents, ensuring local adaptability and adjusting supporting business processes. At this point, we knew we had cracked the nut.” Thomas says. “We now have a clear and actionable overview of our market and with this a common understanding of where we are heading in Maersk Line. Now we have the same understanding of the market when communicating, and the impact is already visible. We still have a long way to go, before it has self-sustaining life in the organisation, but the foundation is strong.”