A TALE AS OLD AS TIME 

When the first merchants started reaping the benefits of using the sea to move goods more quickly and more cost-effectively in the 3rd century BC, shipping became the backbone of global trade, and it has been growing ever since. Despite all the advancements in how the goods are transported, the process of getting goods from their point of manufacture to their place of sale remains incredibly disparate and complex. 

As a global leader in shipping services, A.P. Moller – Maersk is working to connect and simplify their customers’ supply chains. They wanted to extend their offering by building a new solution suitable for typically underserved small and mid-sized customers.

THE COMPLEXITY OF THE MODERN DAY  

The daily life of small and medium-sized businesses is increasingly global, complex, and fast-paced. Every day, thousands of products are moving through the supply chain, on multiple carriers, coming from and reaching many supply chain partners and customers. For many of these companies, this complexity is managed completely manually via spreadsheets, emails and phone calls. Which, despite their hard work, leads to reduced visibility and control – and ultimately higher costs or lost sales due to inefficiencies in the supply chain, which impacts stock levels and delivery times.

A CLEVER SOLUTION NEEDS A SMART DIGITAL PLATFORM

To address this issue, Maersk decided to launch a digital platform which provides their customers and their partners everything they need to take control of their supply chain, from the factory to the market in an automated, digital way. 

Endava was part of this journey from day one. Our engineering team complemented Maersk’s own capabilities perfectly and helped them to tackle the challenging task of designing and building the platform successfully. Given the size of the IT landscape in Maersk, one of the biggest challenges for the Endavans was having to integrate with a large number of internal systems, including those used by the internal operational teams, and piece all the information together to be presented online to end customers in a user-friendly way.

KEEPING THE VISION IN MIND

Together we designed and developed Maersk Flow, a responsive and modern web interface that helps supply chain professionals manage shipments from any carrier and freight forwarder. Maersk Flow allows collaboration with supply chain partners in an environment that provides appropriate access to relevant stakeholders. It facilitates advanced visibility and control, allowing easy access to information, milestones and alerts, and reduces manual work by automating processes and performance monitoring.  

The result for Maersk Flow’s numerous new customers is vastly improved visibility into their supply chain operations, allowing them to take the right action at the right time. This added control allows businesses to be more efficient in managing their supply chain, helping them meet their targets and prevent surprises.