In the world of maritime logistics, where every container, every route and every cost matters, accuracy and collaboration are vital. For Hapag-Lloyd, a maritime transport giant with 235 vessels, nearly 12 million containers shipped per year and offices in 128 countries, coordinating financial and operational planning had until then been a real headache.
With more than 400 planners involved, preparing budgets and forecasts became a long marathon: three months of consolidating scattered data, Excel files coming from all over the world and complexity that was difficult to manage.
The challenge: turning complexity into clarity
“Data consolidation was extremely time-consuming,” explains Merle Remmel, Director of Management Control at Hapag-Lloyd. Every update required manual intervention, slowing team responsiveness and limiting transparency between departments.
In response, the company embarked on an ambitious digitalisation project: finding a tool capable of connecting employees responsible for capacity, sales and cost management, while making their lives easier.
The solution: Board, a common language for 400 planners
After a rigorous selection process, Hapag-Lloyd chose Board, a flexible and intuitive EPM platform. Connected directly to the company’s SAP and internal systems, Board has become the “single point of truth”, a reliable single source of data for all planners.
“Board is like a blank canvas that can be shaped to meet our needs,” says Nicolas Mascitto, Director of Financial Planning.
In just six months, with the help of partner Celver AG, more than 20 planning models were created and deployed. Today, the 50 capacity planners, 200 sales planners and 150 cost planners all work from the same data, in real time.
Tangible and human benefits
The results are already clear:
Time savings thanks to the automation of repetitive tasks.
Greater transparency with detailed forecasts down to the level of a shipping route.
More collaboration between teams, which can finally rely on the same reliable information.
Greater flexibility with the introduction of rolling forecasts, enabling forecasts to be adjusted continuously.
In addition to all these results, operational impacts are visible: “Today, we can automatically calculate an exact price per container instead of relying on averages,” says Henrik Schilling, Director of Management Control.
A new direction for finance and management control
Beyond the technical gains, this project embodies a new culture at Hapag-Lloyd: finance that is more connected, more agile and firmly focused on the future. The next steps? Rolling out dynamic dashboards and interactive reporting accessible everywhere, from meeting rooms to executives’ smartphones.
As the project team aptly puts it: “This is a real starting point towards a new way of working. Everyone is on ‘board’, both literally and figuratively.”
source: board.com
