Learn how your operating costs compare to your competitors’ across more than 20 different categories.
BCG’s operating cost benchmark provides the detailed information you need about your fleet’s cost-competitiveness, providing specifics down to the vessel level. Whether you operate containers, dry bulks, tankers, gas carriers, or off-shore vessels, the Vessel OPEX Benchmark can tell you how your vessel operating costs compare to those of your competitors across more than 20 different categories.
The benchmark enables you to see and understand how your fleet performs against fleets of comparable type, size, age, trading area, and more—both in the aggregate and at vessel level.
The Vessel OPEX Benchmark gives you a sense of the latest trends and developments in shipping costs. And it provides the tools you need to discover and examine unexpected cost deviations, which you can use as a data-driven guide to your next optimization projects.
With the Vessel OPEX benchmark, you will be able to see how the cost structures of the top-quartile performers differ from the those of the rest of sector, how the industry’s cost pressures are changing, and in which areas your costs seem to deviate from the average. These data will allow you to conduct an in-depth performance review of vessel classes, cost categories, and management practices, and target the places where improvements will have the most dramatic effects.
Compare your on-shore costs for core ship management and shore-based support with those of your competition.
The Shore-Cost Benchmark provides a comprehensive overview of staff distribution by function on both ship and shore, delivering the level of detail you need to understand how your staffing efficiency compares by both FTE and all-in costs to that of your peers.
With this benchmark, you will learn how your organization set-up compares to your peers. You’ll be able to determine whether you are operating in the right location—and whether your staff is relatively more expensive. Crucial questions can be answered right away: What are my sources of competitive advantage in my shore costs? Where is there room for improvement?
The Shore-Cost Benchmark can also serve as an excellent compass for steering you toward the best improvement opportunities and the leanest organizational structure. It can help you clarify how you need to restructure your organization and how you should refine the roles and goals of your management team.
Armed with accurate information about staff costs and distribution as well as comparisons to peers, you will be positioned to make more informed personnel decisions. You’ll also be better informed about how or whether you should redistribute your people across functions.
Monitor your fuel procurement costs against those of your competitors, port by port.
For many fleet managers, the profitability of a voyage is largely determined even before a ship casts off. Understanding how your fuel-procurement strategy compares to that of your competitors can afford you a key advantage.
Fuel oil may be a commodity, but how and where you buy it can make all the difference in your overall cost structure. The Bunker Procurement Benchmark gives you specific company-to-company comparisons that use numbers from Platts Bunkerwire to flesh out details at the port level. With one click, you can get a bird’s eye view as well, including a comparison of your company’s numbers to the overall industry and top-quartile performance averages.
This survey provides in-depth analyses of the major underlying drivers of cost as well as firm-level comparisons of procurement performance. These greatly help you understand where your organization’s supply has the most room for improvement.
Finally, the Bunker Procurement Benchmark includes an analysis that shows how your procurement-management practices compare to those of your competitors. This comparison will make it possible for you to set realistic targets for future improvements and to accelerate internal procurement discussions by facilitating a fact-based dialog among your stakeholders.
See how your fuel consumption measures up—by size, route, age, and ownership.
Fleet mileage matters for two reasons. First, it drives an important component of shipping costs. Second, variations in mileage are like a person’s temperature: this single indicator can reveal a lot about an organization’s vessel size, trade route, management practices, and more.
Consumption comparisons are available across all major trade routes: the Far East to Europe, Intra-Europe, Intra-Asia, Intra-Americas, Transatlantic, Transpacific, Middle East to India, Latin America, Oceania, and Africa.
One feature that makes the Bunker Consumption Benchmark especially useful is the level of detail that enables apples-to-apples performance comparisons across many of the consumption categories you care about.
In particular, the Bunker Consumption Benchmark report includes important graphs already prepared for executive briefings, such as graphs showing company and vessel comparison on bunker performance segmented by size, route, vessel age, and ownership. It also includes in-depth analysis of the major underlying drivers of consumption, comparisons of vessel performance, and detailed analysis of how your consumption management practices compare to that of your competitors.
Discover how your handling costs stack up against the competition, by port and by sector. If you think of shipping as a long-distance race, the terminals are the starting gate and the finish line.
If you stumble at either end, winning becomes very unlikely.
The Terminal Benchmark provides the detailed information you need to compare your performance against each of the other carriers’ expected unit costs, average unit costs, and average cost based on what local real estate market data says about expected trends and developments.
You’ll uncover your own expected unit cost, the average unit cost across all participants, the savings potential for individual corridors, storage and reefer destinations. You will also have a useful performance overview by cost category.
Senior decision-makers are likely to find several graphs particularly helpful, including an executive summary of key results, performance at the cluster level, deep-dives on the top clusters with the highest savings potential and biggest overall spend, and details on storage costs and reefer surcharges.
Check that you are paying the right rate for your land transportation, by region, mode, and corridor—or determine why you aren’t.
In the end, the customer cares only about all-in costs, so you need to know what you’re paying for your intermodal transportation charges. Whether it’s for the last mile or the last 500 miles, those off-ship costs matter a lot.
The Intermodal Benchmark allows you to see just how your volume and unit costs compare to those of your peers on each matched route. It provides clear indications about whether you are overpaying on any of those routes.
The Intermodal Benchmark gives you a way to compare your performance not only against your competition but between routes—whether you are shipping by truck, feeder, barge or rail, or to North, South, or Central America; Europe; Asia-Pacific; or Africa. Its analyses makes it easier for you to search for and find the cheapest shipping option.
The bottom line: with the Intermodal Benchmark, you get clear performance analytics on every matched corridor. Of particular interest is the visual graph that reflects the distribution cost by stretch and the relative economic importance of the smallest and largest delivery corridors.