A White Paper by Ash Shukla, Chief Business Officer, Global Wave Dynamics

Navigating the Storm: Business Issues Facing Ocean Liners and the Role of Global Capability Centers

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Introduction

Executive Summary

Ocean liners—spanning container ships, Ro-Ro carriers, and bulk vessels—are the backbone of global trade, transporting over 80% of the world’s goods. However, the industry is currently weathering intense operational, financial, and technological headwinds. High volatility in freight rates, increased regulatory burdens, labor shortages, and rising operational costs are forcing ocean liner companies to rethink their business models.

This white paper explores these challenges in detail and presents Global Capability Centers (GCCs) as a transformative solution. GCCs can centralize and streamline key support functions such as finance, IT, HR, and procurement, helping ocean liners reduce costs, improve resilience, and build agile operations for a changing world.

The big question is — how do you keep delivering a luxury experience while staying lean, efficient, and profitable?

The answer lies in two things:

  • Building a Global Competency Center (GCC) to handle repeatable, non-core tasks
  • Using technology to simplify, automate, and connect your operations

Let’s break it down.

What’s Really Holding Part 135 Operators Back?

Most operational pain points for private jet companies come down to a few common themes:

Too Many Systems, Not Enough Connection

Every department uses its own tool — one for scheduling, another for crew management, another for maintenance. None of them talk to each other naturally. That means people waste hours doing manual data entry, chasing down updates, and fixing errors.

Expensive People Doing Low-Value Work

Your most skilled dispatchers and ops staff are spending time on things like:

Creating trip quotes
Filling out forms
Sending status updates
Booking hotels or ground transport for crew

These tasks are critical — but they’re not where your experts should spend most of their time.

What’s Really Holding Part 135 Operators Back?

Most operational pain points for private jet companies come down to a few common themes:

What’s Really Holding Part 135 Operators Back?

Most operational pain points for private jet companies come down to a few common themes:

Expensive People Doing Low-Value Work

Your most skilled dispatchers and ops staff are spending time on things like:

Creating trip quotes
Filling out forms
Sending status updates
Booking hotels or ground transport for crew

These tasks are critical — but they’re not where your experts should spend most of their time.