Differentiated products that put customers at the center

To create great products means to listen, understand and rebuild constantly.

In the current global market situation, affected by the pandemic and the severe capacity disruptions, the biggest challenge for our customers was to acquire the right agility and resilience in their supply chain. While talking to them, a key learning was that more clarity was needed on the kind of contracts and products they were purchasing with us.

Which is why we decided to change things and focus more on partnerships built on the right contract model.

A clear, configurable, standardized offering

Individual customer agreements have long dominated the Ocean contract space, causing some confusion over terms and conditions while not being able to solve all needs.

We wanted to change the conversation from the very individual ocean-leg procurement into a more holistic, partnership-based conversation where the customer needs are in the center and we can truly partner with them to solve their challenges.

We have worked on updating our offering, improving the quality and the reliability. Having just one product was not acknowledging the differentiated customer needs. So, what we have done was to understand what our customers were looking for and design six different contract products to better meet their needs.

Maersk has now six standard products for the 2022 tender season:

Flat, Seasonal Preset, Seasonal Sync (which are traditional ocean contract products) and Block Space, Flexible, and Unlimited (which are partnership products). For more information about the different standard products, read more here.

The advantages

Our customers can benefit from a new offering that is sharp, easier to understand, gives them a choice, eliminates procurement administration and gives them autonomy through digital (live) data and 24/7 service access - moving away from load intention to delivering outcomes.

How does it work? All customers can approach our local sales reps that will guide them towards the best solution, according to the best available option. We see a significant increase, for example, in some of our smaller customers choosing to customize solutions by combining Less-than-Container Load (LCL) shipments together with Full Container Load (FCL) ones in our contract, as it provides flexibility and ease of business for them.

This is an opportunity for us to build better-designed products through meaningful partnerships, and we are positive that it will benefit our customers greatly.

What is next

We have done ocean procurement for so many years, but now it’s time to look at things differently and bring a new perspective. Just like recently shown in our UPSIDE campaign, we believe there is a significant upside in terms of value creation if you can imagine new possibilities. This cannot be done if we keep doing things in the traditional procurement way.

This is just the beginning. These products will continue to evolve, bringing more relevant propositions for our customers’ business. Our ambition is to scale and optimize operations to bring this clarity beyond ocean, across our integrated end-to-end logistic reach – All The Way.

For this, with data ethics compliance in the forefront of our operations, we will continue to use technology and smart data to power these products, so they can deliver on our customers’ ambitions including a sustainable supply chain, that focuses on carbon reduced transportation, and is ready for the future.

Ocean Transport