Market and customer pressures will drive changes in the way container shipping lines currently do business. Customers are increasingly demanding greater reliability of container shipments at lower total cost. Changes in public policy are likely to require plans for increased security throughout the industry. Meanwhile, infrastructure constraints and threats from new, more agile entrants will challenge the way industry players currently approach both asset optimization and customer relationships. In order to position themselves to benefit from these changes, container shipping lines will need to balance product reliability with asset utilization more evenly. This will require a shift in mindset. Moreover, container shipping lines will need to change deep seated ways of working to achieve executional excellence and organizational flexibility. Based on our perspective of how industry trends are likely to play out over the next ten years, we expect the market to be freer and more open, while the industry becomes more concentrated and more focused on customer relationships. Looking ahead ten years, we believe that leading container shipping lines will have the following characteristics: - Strategic clarity: a focused business model and a precisely targeted value proposition, based on clear alignment of strategic intent with core competencies, customer base and asset planning.
- Efficiency, quality and economy: standardized business processes, practices driven by workflow software, performance metrics that support continuous improvement, integrated information systems, and a single master database delivering higher product quality, lower costs and excellent data integrity.
- Robust network profitability management: increased profi ts and free cash flow because of smarter yield management and faster network choices. It offers the ability to optimize asset utilization, increase revenue quality, increase density to reduce costs, and price with a real understanding of customer profi tability.
- Targeted customer relationship management: faster growth through a strategic, enterprisewide approach to managing customers, improved ability to initiate strategic partnerships with top-tier customers, and synthesized customer needs to allow fast development of better targeted products.
- Advanced business intelligence: the ability to sustain leadership because sales, product development and operations are all optimized across the enterprise. Business intelligence helps create an innovative and problemsolving culture that is focused on the customer—and thrives under everchanging market demands.
In the container shipping industry one thing is certain: the race to acquire the capabilities customers demand—namely better reliability, visibility and data integrity for reduced costs—will intensify. Though change may come slowly, and affect some contenders more than others, container shipping lines must start preparing now. To lead the industry, companies will need deeper relationships with customers and the capabilities to thwart the competitive threat of new package delivery provider entrants. In the past, a focus on asset optimization has been integral to success. In the future, carriers that give that same attention to managing product reliability more effectively will reap the rewards. Regardless of strategic course, carriers need to work toward executional excellence and business flexibility so that they can provide expected service levels to their target customers and generate attractive profits—no matter what surprises the market holds. 
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