Challenge:
A.P. Moller – Maersk is an integrated logistics company working to connect and simplify its customers’ supply chains. As a global leader in logistics services, the company operates in more than 130 countries and employs around 100,000 people.
Chris Thompson, Head of Implementation for North America, is part of the warehousing and transportation arm of the organization. He oversees a team of project managers who implement all new customers, facilities, and operations in the United States, Canada, and Mexico. Before implementing Tempus, Thompson was using Microsoft Project. When his original company was acquired by Maersk in 2020, his organization had a portfolio of projects that was quite small, typically conducting between five and eight projects each year. Upon being acquired by a global powerhouse in the logistics industry, Thompson recognized that his need for managing his resources and projects would grow exponentially. “I knew that being acquired by a company of that size meant that we were going to grow very rapidly. My team enables the revenue generation of the logistics operations because they can’t run the operations until my team sets it up.” Thompson described the complexity of their operations and what his team manages. “When you think about it, everything you touch or interact with in your daily life has gone through between 25 and 50 logistics operations. From the glasses on your face to the lip gloss on your lips, everything has gone through so many different supply chains. That’s what we do, we set all of that up. There is an inherent complexity in that process that has to be made manageable. At the time, we had 15 projects, and I knew that it would grow. We have doubled every year since then. On average, we have between two and five facility or operations going live each week.”
Thompson has spent his career in logistics, primarily in the transportation space. As a project manager, he had become an expert with Microsoft Project, but felt the software was limiting as its projects must have start and end dates. Thompson says, “I was using a product and I needed to go perpetually forward managing the portfolio with a product that was based on a start and an end. It didn’t work well. I started researching other platforms. There were very few products whose focus is on the management of the portfolio and the resources within it.”
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