For most of my career I have been working in various shipping related jobs. I have been a broker, I have been working on the cargo owner side of the table, and I have been working in ship owning companies. The common factor with these positions is that they have always been related to the commercial side of the industry. My most recent position was as Chief Commercial Officer for a ship owning company.
My experience and background gives me a good understanding of how the various players in the shipping industry are thinking and how they interact. I hope I will be able to increase the understanding of this interplay within the company and the team.
I think it will be very interesting and challenging to design a platform that enables all the various companies, with different needs and goals, to work more efficiently and to communicate more efficiently with each other.
I think the key to a successful team is to find people with different backgrounds and knowledge that complement each other, and to make them understand and agree on a common plan and goal.
Yes, shipping is a conservative business in a lot of ways, but that is because it is a well functioning business as it is. But now there are two important disruptions taking place at the same time that is forcing the industry to think differently. The first is the need to reduce the carbon footprint of the industry that is making the various players try to find new ways, or new fuel, to run the engines. And the second is how cheaper connectivity to and from the ships will enable the industry to automate and digitize a lot of the control functions onboard, as well as a lot of the routine work onboard the ships and in the offices around the world.
What makes Maritime Optima different from a lot of the other companies that are trying to digitize the shipping industry is that we are looking at how we use digitalization to improve the commercial side of the business. And we are trying to do this without disrupting the existing structure of the industry, the existing Charterer, Broker, Owner relationship as it is today. We are trying to increase the efficiency of information gathering and decision making within each company, and then how the various companies communicate and share this information with each other. So instead of taking anyone out of the equation we are making each participant more efficient.
