My understanding of the industry changed

When I first joined the maritime technology space a few months ago, one of the first things I kept hearing was that shipping was behind.

Slow moving. Legacy heavy. Resistant to change.

And honestly, coming in from the outside, I could understand why people said it.

This is an industry built on processes, regulation, operational consistency, and decades of doing things a certain way. Some of the systems still in use today were implemented years ago. Some workflows are still heavily manual. In several conversations, people joked that shipping had spent the last 20 years layering technology on top of paper processes rather than fully redesigning them.

At first glance, it’s easy to see why the industry gets labelled as outdated.

But the more conversations I’ve had, the more I’ve realised that narrative only tells part of the story.

Over the past few months, I’ve spent time speaking with digital transformation leaders, CIOs, operational excellence specialists, technology consultants, maritime SaaS businesses, product leaders, data professionals, and shipping executives across the wider ecosystem.

And the biggest thing I’ve realised is this:

Shipping is no longer asking if it should transform.

The conversation now is how to make transformation actually work.

There is far more happening beneath the surface

Because despite the industry’s reputation, there is an enormous amount happening beneath the surface.

I’ve spoken with companies rolling out enterprise-wide ERP transformations across global fleets. Others integrating operational shipping systems directly into financial platforms to create end-to-end visibility across commercial and finance operations. Some are embedding AI into reporting workflows, operational support systems, and performance management processes. Others are building entirely new data and product functions internally.

One transformation leader I spoke with described their role as “sitting between business strategy and operational execution.” Another said their biggest challenge wasn’t the technology itself, but “getting the organisation aligned around how the business should actually operate moving forward.”

That theme came up repeatedly.

And honestly, it’s probably been the biggest shift in my own understanding of maritime digitalisation.

The real challenge is no longer technology

The real challenge no longer feels like access to technology.

It feels organisational.

In fact, one of the most consistent observations across my conversations was that technology is often the easier part.

The harder part is:

• change management
• governance
• incentives
• adoption
• leadership alignment
• and operational trust.

One transformation specialist told me:

“80% of transformation is people and behaviour. Technology and process are the easy part.”

Another said:

“You can have the best systems in the world, but if the business doesn’t trust the data or understand how to use it operationally, the value never materialises.”

That really stuck with me.

Because it links directly back to the first article I shared around Maritime’s data utilisation problem. The industry is not short of data. If anything, it’s generating more data than ever before. The challenge is structuring it, governing it, integrating it, and turning it into operationally useful decisions.

And interestingly, many of the challenges slowing transformation down no longer seem purely technical either. In several conversations, leaders spoke about the difficulty of finding people who can bridge operations, technology, strategy, and change management all at once.

AI is accelerating the pressure

And now AI is accelerating that pressure even further.

Interestingly, most of the people I’ve spoken to aren’t talking about AI in the overly futuristic way you often see online. The conversations are far more practical than that.

They’re talking about:

• reducing manual workflows
• improving operational reporting
• automating repetitive tasks
• improving decision making
• streamlining performance management
• creating cleaner operational visibility.

But nearly every AI conversation eventually circles back to the same thing:

AI is only as good as the operational structure and data underneath it.

Integration is becoming the next major challenge

And that’s where another huge theme keeps appearing: interoperability.

A surprising amount of transformation effort now seems to revolve around integration rather than invention.

Connecting systems. Standardising workflows. Aligning platforms. Creating shared definitions. Improving data flow between operational and financial systems. Reducing fragmentation across the organisation.

One person described it perfectly:

“Five years ago, everyone was digitising individual functions. Now everyone is trying to connect them.”

That feels incredibly accurate.

In many ways, maritime now feels like an industry moving from isolated digitalisation into enterprise-wide transformation.

The industry is moving forward… just unevenly

And despite the reputation shipping still has externally, there are some genuinely impressive things happening across the market.

I’ve spoken with leaders overseeing global operating model redesigns. Businesses consolidating years of technical debt. Companies restructuring entire technology functions so they can move faster. Operators implementing standardised APIs across their ecosystems. Organisations building AI and cybersecurity capability internally. Transformation teams introducing enterprise governance structures that simply didn’t exist before.

Some companies are clearly moving faster than others. Adoption still varies hugely across the market. Budget constraints remain real. Legacy infrastructure still exists everywhere. And yes, there are still organisations hesitant to change until there is a very clear ROI attached.

In some cases, even defining what ‘good’ transformation leadership looks like is still evolving. Businesses increasingly want hybrid profiles that understand operations, technology, people, and commercial realities together, and those skillsets are understandably difficult to find.

But the idea that maritime simply ‘isn’t changing’ no longer feels true to me.

Maritime is entering the operational phase of transformation

If anything, it feels like the industry is now entering a much more difficult phase of transformation.

Not the exciting pilot phase.

Not the presentation slide phase.

The operational phase.

The phase where:

• systems actually need integrating
• processes need redesigning
• data needs governing
• people need retraining
• leadership teams need aligning
• and businesses need to decide how they want to operate long term.

That’s a very different challenge altogether.

One of the more interesting comments I heard came from somebody who has spent decades leading transformation programmes across multiple industries. He said shipping reminds him of where other industries were years ago, except maritime has the added complexity of global operations, vessels, regulation, legacy infrastructure, and deeply operational cultures all at once.

And honestly, that feels true as well.

Because the more I learn about this space, the less I see an industry standing still.

What I actually see is an industry trying to modernise while still keeping global trade moving at the same time.

That’s not easy.

Especially in an environment where operational reliability matters more than almost anything else.

The people driving change are changing too

The other thing I’ve noticed is that the people driving successful transformation in maritime rarely look like ‘traditional IT leaders’ anymore.

Most of the strongest people I’ve spoken with sit somewhere between:

• business and technology
• operations and strategy
• product and transformation
• leadership and execution.

They understand vessels, operations, commercial realities, and people… but also platforms, AI, integration, governance, and data.

That hybrid skillset keeps appearing over and over again.

And honestly, I think that’s where the industry is heading.

Not toward technology replacing operations.

But toward technology becoming embedded into how operations function.

That’s a very different thing.

One thing already feels clear

The more conversations I have, the more I think Maritime’s biggest challenge is no longer deciding whether transformation matters.

The challenge now is making transformation operationally usable, culturally adopted, and commercially valuable.

And while the industry may not move overnight, it’s very clearly moving.