The incident could not have come at a worse moment: a 220,000-ton ship, longer than the Eiffel Tower is tall, blocking one of the busiest waterways on Earth. When the Ever Given ran aground in the Suez Canal in March of 2021, global supply chains were already stretched to the limit. A year of Covid-19 lockdowns had shuttered factories and led to shifts in consumer preferences which meant business processes around the globe were out of sync. Companies scrambled to deal with container shortages, congested ports, and a lack of key inputs like microchips. The Ever Given made a bad situation worse: in the six days it was stuck, nearly $60 billion worth of global trade was disrupted.
No business leader could have predicted that a global pandemic would challenge nearly all business processes overnight. When consumer behavior shifted suddenly and longstanding operations became no longer viable, it was the companies that understood and effectively managed their business processes—and that documented their processes digitally—who were far better prepared to embrace change.
This is an excellent example of how companies can harness business process management to improve efficiency, respond to unexpected market changes, and ultimately drive business transformation.