Anthony Feghali

Can the Maritime industry sprint to the 21st Century?

By Anthony Feghali, Student at Texas A&M and Voyager Portal Intern

For those of you who are familiar with the Maritime Industry, it is widely recognized as archaic and paper-ridden. Current leaders are finding that older generations are retiring, and few younger generations are starting their careers in Maritime. I, like many others, would ask myself why I would ever want to work in an industry that is so outdated.

When discussing future jobs with my classmates, an overwhelmingly common topic we found ourselves stumped by is how many of us find the copious amounts of emails and monotonous daily tasks stifling and unrewarding. To preface my experience, it all started at a freight forwarder. Although I found the experience to be quite fulfilling, I also noticed an open market in the industry that could be filled by digitization and automation. As a child growing up, I developed a strong passion for the environment. You may be thinking that the Maritime industry is an unusual pick to start a career for someone conscious of the environment. But on the contrary, I learned early on that the root foundations of conservation are synonymous with efficiency, which is a driving factor to success. By automating systems, there is an almost instantaneous reduction in miscommunication (i.e., lost paperwork, typing errors leading to direct development inefficiency.) I find that the Maritime industry is one of those unsung heroes. It is a sector that is driving our world’s economy, yet at the same time, it is aging rapidly. Recently, the world has been moving at an alarming rate and one in which cyberattacks are increasingly frequent. By recognizing the inherent security risk to digitizing businesses, cybersecurity will become increasingly relevant and by following the “separation of duties” method in which multiple people are needed to complete a task successfully. We will then see modernization in the industry, and I think an even faster and more efficient global supply chain. 

Today, it is relatively common for a customer service representative to go through 100 emails a day, which by no means is a headache-free process. But by implementing a similar approach to the “separation of duties” concept used in cybersecurity, companies can see a direct increase in success.  I am very excited to be joining Voyager Portal as I have found that the services they offer are able to provide solutions to the concerns I initially had about the industry. In addition, their ability to offer secure collaborative workflows, improve supply chains  and reduce email communication by up to 90% have made me much more confident that the industry is heading in the right direction.

About me: My name is Anthony Feghali, and I am a student at Texas A&M studying Maritime Business Administration with a minor in cybersecurity. Please feel free to reach out and connect with me on LinkedIn!

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