If you have never visited A.P. Moller – Maersk’s headquarters before, it is just as you would imagine. Located directly on Copenhagen's waterfront, close to Amalienborg Palace and the royal family, the sleek building and its welcoming staff embody the company’s world-famous core principle, Constant Care. Everyone and everything ooze precision and professionalism.

Patrick Jany, CFO and Member of the Executive Board at Maersk, mirrors this same energy. Since joining Maersk in 2020, he has focused on driving transformational change and continuous optimisation across the organisation.  

“We have moved the company from a very established shipping company into an integrator of logistics,” Jany begins and continues:

Three-phased digital transformation 

Patrick Jany explains that Maersk is in the middle of a three-phased digital transformation.

“The first phase, which we have completed, was about rebuilding our digital platforms to create a strong and unified foundation. Not just for ourselves, but also to integrate technologies from our many acquisitions over the years. Acquisitions bring significant commercial benefits by expanding our volume and presence, but without an existing framework to integrate platforms into, realising cost synergies becomes difficult,” Jany explains.  

“Delivering seamless customer experiences depends on seamless internal data management. That is why we have replaced legacy technologies and specialised applications with a future-ready platform capable of supporting our digital ambitions.” 

The second phase involves deploying the new digital capabilities across all Maersk’s business units. With more than 100,000 customers in 130 countries, this phase is still ongoing, while Maersk has also initiated the next phase.

“The third phase of our digital transformation is about scaling solutions, delivering integrated experiences to customers. Without the right technology, we will end up like everyone else in the industry, offering siloed logistics solutions. However, we believe we have the brand, financial strength and long-term commitment to succeed.” 

Look for the happy flow

One of the key learnings from Maersk’s digital transformation has been the importance of thoroughly understanding business processes before building systems to manage workflows.

“It is easy to build a nice system, but if it is based only on theory and not grounded in reality, people will quickly stop using it after rollout. As a result, 80-90% of users end up focusing on problem-solving and making exceptions to the intended workflow – the ‘unhappy flow,’ as we call it – which directly reduces productivity in the system and impacts service delivery,” Patrick Jany says. 

ELT and Gemba walks

Patrick Jany underlines the importance of executive leadership team (ELT) involvement in Maersk's digital transformation. Active participation from the ELT ensures alignment and commitment across the organisation. Additionally, conducting Gemba walks, where leaders observe operations firsthand, allows for a deeper understanding of processes and challenges on the ground. 

“At our quarterly executive committee meetings, we review the progress of our technology initiatives. It is very powerful to include the voice of users in those meetings, leveraging their feedback to guide decisions and set priorities,” Jany says. 

"Once you have all elements in place – processes, master data, change management – resource allocation and pacing become critical. Coordination is essential, because, at Maersk, we have 13 different logistics offerings, ranging from warehouses and customs brokerage to ocean, air and land transportation, each with its own needs. If you try to transform all these systems at once, you inevitably face resource allocation challenges, as each area will require just a bit more to move forward. Ensuring coordinated resource allocation so everything advances together is a major focus for us.” 
 

Do more with less 

On the ubiquitous topic of GenAI, Patrick Jany advocates a proactive and structured approach. At Maersk, initial experiments began with traditional AI and machine learning, but these have rapidly expanded with the introduction of GenAI. According to Jany, it's essential to establish clear ethical guidelines and maintain control over data privacy from the outset, creating a safe environment where teams can experiment freely.

One area where GenAI has already made a clear impact is customer interaction. Maersk receives thousands of inquiries every day from customers regarding deliveries. The AI-driven customer service solution integrates data from multiple systems to generate responses, which an operator simply reviews and approves with a click.

“The new AI-driven system is a huge success and demonstrates the potential of automation,” Patrick Jany explains. “Our strategy at Maersk is built around growth. Ultimately, that strategy depends on our ability to achieve more with the resources we have while enhancing quality. Logistics, as I mentioned earlier, is very fragmented. If you don’t have AI capabilities to automate workflows, you will spend significant time searching for data instead of delivering value to customers.” 

No golden AI solution 

Since GenAI became available on an enterprise scale, it is no exaggeration to say that it has revolutionised industries, businesses and individual productivity. Yet, its vast potential is also why many companies find themselves caught between high expectations and the challenge of delivering tangible benefits.

“Our approach to GenAI is to encourage multiple smaller, practical implementations rather than searching for a golden, all-encompassing solution that transforms the business model, triples profits and cuts workloads in half. That day will probably come. But right now, it is far more valuable to implement something concrete, have people interact with it, learn from it, test and start generating ideas from there,” Jany says.

He describes how the technology itself sparks momentum within the organisation.

Still, Jany acknowledges that many CFOs are unsure if they are moving fast enough – a question he often hears. “Everyone is asking the same: are we too slow to adopt GenAI? From my conversations with peers, I can say, no. The real priority is not the speed itself but the foundation beneath adoption. Right now, the important thing is to take a step back and question the groundwork for working with GenAI. Have we set the right guardrails? What is ethically acceptable for us? How do we keep data safe? In short, you need to define the framework so you can let GenAI loose. At the same time, we must create a controlled environment where we allow our people to experiment and innovate freely.” 

Guardian and enabler 

Patrick Jany sees his role as CFO in the digital transformation as both a guardian and an enabler.

“Part of my role is to not get overexcited about new technology. Like with GenAI. We need to make sure that when we are ready to roll out a new solution, we do not find ourselves going back months later to fix things,” he says.

“In general, we are very close to our customers at Maersk, which allows us to move forward at a high pace of change. So, as CFO, I don’t need to push progress, because that happens naturally. My role is to ensure that all the components are delivered in the right sequence and in a coordinated way.” 
 

Obligation to provide interesting jobs 

As part of its digital transformation, Maersk has reached several key milestones. They have launched a new land transportation system, unifying many old legacy systems into a single, modern and standardised platform. A new solution for air transportation has also been implemented, along with a new warehouse management system. In addition, Maersk has introduced an AI-driven cash forecasting solution within the treasury function. This AI model delivers higher accuracy compared to traditional manual forecasting, which previously relied on employees around the world inputting data and creating forecasts by hand.

“To sum up, our digital transformation is largely about enabling people to focus more on analysis and business support, rather than spending time on data gathering,” Jany explains.  

“No one knows exactly where AI and the agentic workforce will take us. But I believe that, as a company, we have an obligation to employ good people and give them interesting jobs. Today, within the CFO organisation and across most companies, you will find employees working overtime to reconcile data, producing the same reports in different ways for different people and performing other repetitive, low-value tasks. We have a whole industry to change. We should not waste precious time on daily tasks that are not necessary.”