Norderstedt, November 15, 2017 – Columbia Marlow has won the Tanker Shipping & Trade Operational Excellence Award 2017. The ship management company was honored for its work in pushing the boundaries in innovation and digitization in the global maritime industry, which it realizes in cooperation with Lufthansa Industry Solutions. In May 2017, the Lufthansa subsidiary and the software company Blue Dynamics, founded by Columbia Marlow, announced they would work together in partnership with Columbia Marlow.
Receiving the award at an Awards Dinner in London’s West End, Mark O’Neil, Columbia Marlow CEO, described the partnership with Lufthansa Industry Solutions as “industry disruptive” and ‘transformational’. He praised the expertise and focus of Lufthansa and Columbia Marlow’s inhouse IT/Digitalisation specialists Blue Dynamics enabling Columbia Marlow to formulate its Digital Vision and Digital Agenda and embark upon its objective to provide the highest standards of information technology and performance monitoring in the industry. “This is Partnership Redefined”, he said.
The partnership was formed to create a fully digital environment consisting of integrated applications and services which enable clients to be fully integrated into the management and vessel operation process, and render the vessels more employable by being compatible with the digital environment of the big charterers and shippers. Such a new digital environment will not only empower staff with more information to assist them in their decision-making processes, ensure optimisation of vessel maintenance and performance, allow for better monitoring of crew training and pastoral needs, but will also help immeasurably in achieving economies and efficacies of scale.
Lufthansa Industry Solutions is a service provider for IT consulting and system integration. This Lufthansa subsidiary helps its clients with the digital transformation of their companies. Its customer base includes companies both within and outside the Lufthansa Group, as well as more than 200 companies in various lines of business. The company is based in Norderstedt and employs more than 1,300 members of staff at several branch offices in Germany, Switzerland and the USA.