Royal Arctic Line gains a more holistic picture of business operations

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Royal Arctic Line A/S (RAL) has an exclusive concession for the transportation of all sea cargo to and from Greenland and between the Greenlandic towns and settlements. This gives RAL the unique position of being Greenland’s lifeline, ensuring supplies to the entire country. It also puts a strong request on RAL to be operational at all times.

RAL has been full service provider since they were founded in 1993, from packing the containers to developing the IT legacy system. Now the strategy is to focus on the core business and ensure that is done in a best-in-class manner, while letting others do what they do best and benefit from both latest technology and a price reduction.

Earlier, RAL used one new supplier for each new implementation. It was hard to integrate the new solutions with the existing systems. It was also difficult to see where an issue occurred because each supplier could see their own part, but not necessarily how it worked with the other pieces and therefore not identify where the problem really was.

RAL found that working with multiple suppliers gave challenges in seeing the real value in an implementation and decided to choose IBM as a partner. The partnership started in a corner and has since grown with time and new needs and requirements from RAL. This has given RAL a much more holistic picture of their IT and business operations.

“When you move your IT to ONE partner, it is extremely important that you can trust them and have the feeling of being allies”, says Tommy Ege Kristensen, Senior Director Human Resources LL.M. at Royal Arctic Line A/S. He continues; “It requires a good and open relationship from both sides where discussions are held both on executive and operational level, with transparency and honesty. It is also important to have a clear overview and sense of control of price and delivery from the partner.”

“Every time we come to IBM with a new idea or an issue, they come back with a solution at a reasonable price and in only a few days. We no longer need to find out where the problem is but rather call IBM and they will find it for us. IBM differs in that way; you can both handle the client service and also show high IT and industry knowledge. This has made us trust IBM and we don’t sit with the bad feeling of not knowing how expensive this will be once an issue has been solved.”

“IBM shows integrity all the way – consistent and regardless of situation”, Tommy says. “We have also seen a great benefit from getting inspired by IBM processes. We have been here for a good amount of years and things work well. We have just never really documented the processes and without the documentation, it is hard to change them. That is where we are focusing now, so that we can do things even better.”