Maritime terminals are complex hubs where cranes, trucks, and precise schedules orchestrate global trade. As operations grow more intricate — from loading and unloading to inventory, appointments, and billing — terminals face increasing pressure to do more with less while maintaining efficiency and service levels.
Digitalization, the strategic adoption of digital technologies to optimize these operations and enhance efficiency, visibility, and agility, will mark more competitiveness for many terminals. At the same time, digitization has been a buzzword for a number of years, without major changes. The key question for terminals is not when to digitalize, but what it can mean for their terminal and how to implement it effectively—starting with what’s possible this year.
Unlike digitization, which refers to the process of converting analog data into a digital format—and which is best achieved through an all-at-once approach—digitalization is the process of integrating digital technologies into business operations to optimize processes, enhance customer experiences, and drive innovation.
In this article, we’ll dig into the reasons why marine terminals should consider their digitalization journey—and how to take the stress out of this process through a strategic, multi-phase approach.
Two common pitfalls marine terminals face without digitalization
As more maritime terminals increase their investment into digitalization, nonadopters are finding themselves at a disadvantage when winning shipping business.
“The shipping lines drive a lot of this digital change,” says Taj Balzotti, Senior Professional Services Analyst at Tideworks. “If a liner company wants to bring more volume into a specific port, they’ll push terminals to upgrade their technology to handle the increase. That competition is a key driver of technology adoption.”
Simply put, digitalization makes terminals more competitive. But, too often, that competitive drive is overshadowed by the weight of maintaining daily operations. Here are two critical factors that often create an overemphasis on short-term solutions over long-term, lasting digitalization:
1. Inaccurate yard inventory
Without connected technology to enhance your visibility across the terminal yard, operators are reliant on manual strategies and processes to track, manage, and move inventory. But manual operations inevitably lead to blind spots and manual errors—and operators don’t have access to helpful tools, such as inventory positioning, scheduling, and location detection systems, to make their jobs easier.
“If you don’t know where your inventory is, you can’t manage it automatically,” says Kevin Morrow, Senior Professional Services Analyst at Tideworks. “In general, poor inventory visibility leads to more unproductive moves on a terminal—which is something we try to avoid at all costs.”
Inefficiencies in inventory management can also create headaches for your shipping customers, creating delays in how quickly containers can be moved in and out of the port.
2. Available budget
Terminal funding for infrastructure upgrades can come from several sources beyond their own revenue and budgets. Many terminals may receive government grants and other support from local, state or regional governments to make improvements to their facility.
But green-lighting digitalization projects isn’t as simple as being able to afford those changes. Terminal leaders must also be convinced that the money is worth spending.
“Budgeting is really a cost-benefit analysis: will this make us more efficient and help generate more revenue?” says Balzotti. “If technology can help increase your margins, it becomes easier to justify in the budget.”
Advocating for these budgets can be particularly difficult in terminals where leadership is highly resistant to digitalization projects. Without strong in-house examples showing the tangible impact of digitalization, change champions are likely to find better budgetary support for small-scale projects that can serve as proofs of concept for more intensive digitalization initiatives in the future.
4 ways to digitize your marine terminal for better business outcomes this year
While incremental digitalization can be the easier path to securing budgets and winning over stakeholder support, this gradual approach also allows operations leaders to take a more sustainable, strategic approach to choosing projects that will deliver tangible benefits for your terminal operations.
Here’s a look at four digitalization projects marine terminals should consider during the early stages of modernizing operations:
1. Improve data visibility across your marine terminal
Connected data across your terminal operations will serve as the foundation for all of your digitalization efforts—which is why it should be your top priority when looking for ways to sustainably modernize your terminal.
“All automation depends on data,” says Morrow. “The performance of any automated or digital system is directly tied to the quality of the data it’s working with. If terminals have a long-term goal of using AI to assess patterns and flag anomalies, for example, they need access to accurate, high-quality data.”
Your technology partners can assist in articulating the ROI case for data visibility, especially when using that visibility as a foundation for supporting future digitalization. Balzotti points out that he’s currently going through this process with a European terminal in the early stages of modernizing its operations.
“They want to know how we measure productivity, the cost of implementing new systems, and how those changes will actually improve performance,” Balzotti says. “What’s the ROI? Will they need more staff to support the technology? These are the kinds of questions we help answer, both upfront and during implementation.”
2. Digitize appointment and booking systems
Manual appointment and booking processes can create a hornet’s nest of problems for marine terminals. Missed appointments can incur demurrage and detention fees, and service delays can lead to excess dwell time and additional fees for late or after-hours work.
Digital appointment and booking systems solve these inefficiencies by providing a simple, accurate, and user-friendly tool to consistently manage operations, minimize unnecessary fees, and optimize your customer experience.
“Errors in appointment and booking management can cause a ripple effect of inefficiency and waste across the yard,” says Morrow. “When a trucker arrives to pick up an import container that’s buried under others, the lift operators have to perform several unproductive moves just to access that container. An appointment system helps the terminal plan ahead so that the container is ready when the trucker arrives.”
3. Automate invoicing and billing processes
Paper-based invoicing and billing lead to longer time-to-collect cycles and reduce terminal cash flows. They also create an increased risk for errors that can result in incorrect billing and unpaid invoices. Automated invoicing and billing minimizes the administrative labor for accounts payable and accounts receivable, helping your terminal collect payment for services rendered faster and more consistently.
“Billing systems are designed to generate revenue for every service provided,” says Balzotti. “If a service is provided to a customer, for example, an integrated billing system can automatically generate a bill for that service. If a container needs to be rehandled, and it wasn’t the terminal’s fault, they can bill for that as well.”
4. Partner with a TOS provider that offers professional services
Implementation can be a challenge at any terminal—even for seemingly simple digitalization projects. New software and tools must be integrated among many different moving parts, and budgets must be carefully managed.
Terminals can address these challenges by partnering with a terminal operating system (TOS) provider that can support your digitalization project through professional services focused on adoption, training, and management.
“You can invest in the best technology and software for your terminal, but if you don’t know how to use it or implement it properly, it’s unlikely to succeed,” says Balzotti. “In my experience, terminals that get the best value from their digitalization efforts are the ones that bring in the right training and support to make sure technology is properly deployed and effectively used.”
The business case for a terminal operating system solution
As marine terminals plan new digitalization projects, operators must be equipped with a flexible platform to organize, manage, and maintain those technologies within the terminal’s ever-evolving digital ecosystem.
That’s exactly what Tideworks Mainsail TOS provides for your terminal. As the pace of digitalization increases both within your facility and around the globe, marine terminals need a platform capable of integrating innovative technologies to access deeper insights and achieve new efficiencies from your day-to-day operations.
Mainsail is the flexible, agile, centralized solution your marine terminal needs as a foundation to harness the full power of automation, AI, and other advanced terminal technologies—creating the competitive advantage you need to meet the increasing expectations of your customers.
A “system of record” for terminals
By storing container operational event data, equipment activity, cargo tracking, and other inputs, Mainsail equips your terminal with a “system of record” spanning all operations.
“This data can offer insights into turn times, response times, gate transactions, and other metrics that help terminal leaders assess their performance and efficiency over time,” says Morrow. “Mainsail also offers versatile integration options with additional Tideworks products and third-party vendors, such as optical character recognition (OCR) and real-time location systems.”
Automated decision-making
Mainsail’s ability to centralize terminal data makes it an important tool supporting proactive decision-making—including decisions and actions that are automated to improve responsiveness and efficiency as maritime shipping conditions evolve.
“Decision-makers can track important events for historical purposes, and Mainsail can link these events, constraints, and behaviors to things like billing and container availability,” says Morrow. “As operations progress and data accumulates, Tideworks can analyze this information to assess historical performance, throughput capacity, trucker turn times, and more.”
This information can then guide automated decision-making and other actions that streamline operations and improve efficiency across a wide range of functions.
Take the next step in digitalizing your terminal with Mainsail
Whether you’re a small terminal serving a few ships a week, or a large terminal facilitating over one million TEUs a year, Mainsail can be configured to your container volumes, your existing infrastructure, and your specific operational goals. Our flexible, agile platform can serve as the first building block in your digitalization journey—or, if you already have systems in place, it can integrate into your existing environment to improve data visibility and provide a framework for continued innovation.
“One thing every marine terminal has in common is that they’re always focused on increasing throughput,” says Balzotti. “But what they need to achieve that is different in every case. That’s where we come in.”
When properly implemented, configured, and supported, Mainsail can help your terminal meet the ever-increasing demands of your customers—and create a powerful competitive advantage both now and in the years to come. Contact us today to get started.