# Digitalizing Maritime Containers Shipping Companies: Impacts on Their Processes
###### Abstract  
Key analysts are emphasizing the importance of the digitalization especially of the supply chain. This work aims to improve maritime shipping companies by introducing digitalization in their operations. This objective is achieved analyzing the impact of maritime container shipping companies' digitalization. This analysis requires as input the Business Process Model (BPMo) and an inventory of digital applications to verify how the BPMo changes when deploying the applications, define the prerequisites necessary for this deployment, and identify the key performance indicators (KPIs) to track it. The impact of the deployment of the applications has been quantified by using four performance dimensions: Costs, Time, Quality, and Flexibility. The results show that the impacts are different per application, with changes in the processes, the addition of new ones, and the decommissioning of others. The impact of digitalization is high when trying to deploy all the applications at the same time. Companies can leverage this work, which requires reviewing the documented impacts in their processes and the applications' prerequisites as well as updating their existing balanced scorecard, incorporating the application's KPIs. A list of 10 applications has been identified as \"quick wins\"; then, applications can be the starting point for digitalizing a company. digitalization; BPM; business process model; artificial intelligence; big data; virtual reality; internet of things; cloud computing; digital security; additive engineering Article Digitalizing Maritime Containers Shipping Companies: Impacts on Impacts on Their Processes  
[PERSON]; [PERSON] [PERSON]; [PERSON]. * Autonomous vehicles and robotics (hereafter, robotics). * Artificial intelligence (AI). * Big data. * Virtual, augmented, and mixed reality (VR). * The internet of things (IoT). * Cloud and edge computing (hereafter, the cloud). * Digital security. * Three-dimensional (3D) printing and additive engineering (3 DP). The size of the maritime transportation industry makes it necessary to focus on one of their industrial sectors; therefore, this work is limited to shipping. Any change to the operations of maritime shipping companies requires understanding of how they operate. Business Process Management (BPM) is the science that monitors how work is performed in an organization in order to ensure consistent outcomes and to take advantage of opportunities for improvement [8]; this makes BPM an optimal technique for understanding maritime shipping companies' operations. Few published works make use of BPM for analyzing the maritime transportation sector. [PERSON] et al. [9] made use of BPM to optimize operations of a shipping company for one specific route. [PERSON] et al. [10] resorted to BPM for ports optimization, thereby analyzing the chains taking place at ports when ships arrive or depart and the interactions with ground organizations. [PERSON] et al. [11] also relied on BPM for analyzing the impact of Information and Communication Technology (ICT) for ports optimization. Finally, [PERSON] et al. [12] partially used BPM in part to evaluate ICTs in the Greek-owned shipping sector. The research being presented in this article aims to improve maritime shipping companies by introducing digitalization in their operations while being aware that the implementation of a successful business process model does not automatically bring about the same benefits for all companies [13] but rather is a starting point for understanding the problems. Given the importance of maritime container shipping companies for the maritime transportation industry, this research focuses on these companies. Since there are different types of maritime container shipping companies, those used in this study are companies that have their own fleet of vessels used both nautially and commercially by the company. The contributions of this work are as follows:  
1.