Windows 365 provides stability and redirects power back to the employees

Maybe you haven’t heard about Monjasa. But the Danish established oil and shipping company is among the six largest marine fuels groups in the world in a fragmented commodities market characterized by little transparency and a low degree of digitization. With its ambitious digital transformation, Monjasa is becoming a technological frontrunner for the benefit of the shipping value chain. The key to success? Giving back power to the employees enabled by Windows 365.

 “When a market isn’t digitized, you lack power because you lack transparency. It’s the same with the banking industry back in the day. Banking customers lacked insights due to analog processes. Now customers have taken back power with the technological development ensuring real-time insights to their economy”. The words come from Michael Bruun Østergaard, Group IT Director in Monjasa. A company no more than 20 years old but with strong values and the advantage of working under one Monjasa brand no matter if you engage with the company in West Africa, Latin America, or Asia.

“Obviously, you can’t digitize marine fuels”, Michael Bruun Østergaard continues. “You can’t run a vessel on 0’s and 1’, but the insights we get from real-time data across the supply chain can help our customers complete their carbon footprint calculations accurately and help us with transparent pricing and operations communication. We’re in a global oil and shipping business. We experience great price fluctuations and have no Trust Pilot. We build on personal relations, and we are selling trust to our customers.  It’s very important that we live up to it – and digitization will help push the industry further forward”.

“We experience great price fluctuations and have no Trust Pilot. We build on personal relations, and we are selling trust to our customers.

– Michael Bruun Østergaard, Group IT Director, Monjasa

Monjasa has been a Microsoft house since 2010 with most processes now digitized and since 2018 the lift to Microsoft cloud has also been completed. “Microsoft is developing rapidly, and it’s clear to us, that the more Microsoft-based tools we have, the faster we get access to the newest software. With Windows 365 we provide our employees with the tools they need to do their job the best way possible because we believe that they know their needs better than the IT department”, Michael Bruun Østergaard stresses. He explains that all employees get a Surface laptop, over which they have complete control and can download the apps and software they believe is helping them do their job. “If I don’t get my employees an open laptop, we take away the creativity – and that’s not a good business case”, Michael Bruun Østergaard says.

Doing business in difficult parts of the world

Not all parts of the world are equally easy to do business in. Bad internet connections, poor devices and risks related to piracy make some parts of the world both dangerous and complex to operate in. However, Monjasa is specialized in doing business under difficult circumstances.

“It comes down to sharing files and communicating which can be quite difficult sometimes. Of course, you always have a satellite connection on the vessels, but that’s very expensive and not optimal. Windows 365 allows us to update files that everybody can access with real-time data and prices and we’re not dependent on state-of-the-art devices, which can get lost or be stolen”, Michael Bruun Østergaard says and continues: “Furthermore, we have extended our cloud universe together with Microsoft. This means that some parts of Azure can be accessed without an internet connection – it’s called Azure HCI Stack and it is a quite new, but very promising – and a powerful tool for us”.

Many of our processes wouldn’t be possible without Windows 365

– Michael Bruun Østergaard, Group IT DIrector, Monjasa

Building the plane while flying it

“Our partnership with Microsoft has developed positively over the past five years. We started by working with the partner ecosystem, but we’re now benefitting very much from working directly with Microsoft. I feel that my input and user experience with new technology is listened to and taken into consideration. You can say that we somewhat built the plane while flying it – and this way of working is very well suited for our type of business”, Michael Bruun Østergaard concludes.

About Monjasa

The core business of Monjasa includes trading and physical supply of marine fuels and ship-owning activities on a global scale. Monjasa’s 500 employees on land and at sea enable the company to supply around 6 million tonnes of marine fuels worldwide on a yearly basis. The Monjasa Group is a Danish-established and privately held company and is fully owned by Monjasa Group CEO and co-founder, Anders Østergaard.