Transforming maritime planning to drive operational efficiency and profitability

Background

A global maritime logistics company, operating a fleet of petroleum tankers, faced significant challenges as its operations and revenue continued to expand. The company’s diverse fleet, which spans crude and clean petroleum tankers, required sophisticated financial planning to manage costs, forecast revenues, and maintain operational efficiency. However, the reliance on disconnected, manual processes for budgeting and forecasting led to inefficiencies and slower decision-making. With a growing fleet and increasing complexity in operations, the need for a more integrated, agile, and scalable financial planning process became clear.

Challenge

The company’s existing financial planning processes, rooted in Excel spreadsheets, were cumbersome and inefficient. Teams across departments worked in silos, leading to difficulties in aligning budgeting assumptions and coordinating multiple versions of the budget. This fragmented approach created version control issues and hindered strategic alignment, making it challenging to present a clear and unified financial picture. Key challenges specific to the maritime industry included: • Complex Vessel and Operational Costs: Managing a large fleet of vessels with varying operational costs, such as fuel, dry-docking, maintenance, and crew wages, made accurate cost allocation and forecasting extremely difficult using Excel-based methods. • Dynamic Market Conditions: Fluctuating global oil prices and shipping rates posed a challenge in maintaining real-time, flexible budgets, which were difficult to adjust when using manual spreadsheets. • Scenario Planning Limitations: Without the ability to easily simulate different scenarios (e.g., changes in fuel costs or fluctuations in demand for oil), the company was unable to proactively assess the financial impact of these variables on their long-term profitability.

Approach

To address these challenges, the company partnered with Keyrus and implemented Anaplan, a connected planning platform. The goal was to streamline the financial planning and budgeting processes by creating a centralized platform that would facilitate seamless collaboration across departments and provide greater flexibility in scenario planning. Keyrus worked closely with the company’s financial teams to understand their processes, define the necessary data for planning, and transform existing Excel-based workflows onto Anaplan. The following maritime-specific configurations were incorporated: • Vessel-Level Financial Modeling: Anaplan was configured to enable financial modeling at the vessel level, tracking revenue, costs, and ROI for each ship from construction phase to scrap value sale. • Operational Cost Integration: The solution integrated complex cost calculations for fuel, maintenance, crew wages, and insurance, allowing the company to manage and forecast expenses with greater precision. • Real-Time Scenario Planning: With Anaplan, stakeholders could simulate a wide range of market conditions (e.g., fluctuations in oil prices or changes in shipping demand) and assess their financial impact in real-time. • Centralized Data and Version Control: Anaplan centralized all financial data from multiple departments, ensuring accurate and consistent information across the organization while improving version control and collaboration.

Key results

Benefits

The implementation of Anaplan, powered by Keyrus, brought several key benefits to the company. First and foremost, the transition from manual, Excel-based processes to an automated, connected platform significantly improved efficiency. The company was able to reduce the time spent on manual tasks, such as data entry and reporting, freeing up valuable resources for more strategic activities. The enhanced scenario planning capabilities allowed the company to better anticipate and respond to changing market conditions. By simulating different business scenarios and adjusting key assumptions in real time, stakeholders gained deeper insights into the potential financial impact of various strategies. This empowered them to make more informed, data-driven decisions that supported the company’s long-term success. • Greater Financial Agility: With real-time updates and the ability to adjust assumptions quickly, the company can now respond more swiftly to market changes, such as fluctuations in fuel prices or shifts in global shipping demand. • Optimized Operational Efficiency: The integration of vessel-specific financial data enables more accurate cost tracking and budgeting, ensuring that resources are allocated effectively across the fleet. • Improved Decision-Making: The company’s financial teams now have the ability to assess a variety of scenarios, from changes in shipping rates to fuel price volatility, providing the insights needed to make proactive, informed decisions. Ultimately, the implementation of Anaplan enabled the company to streamline its financial planning and budgeting, increase its ability to model different scenarios, and improve overall operational efficiency. With these capabilities in place, the company is better equipped to navigate the complexities of the maritime industry and drive profitability in an increasingly dynamic market environment.

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