The business was commoditizing, which led it into a bad situation when its competitors charged low prices in low-cost geographies.

Firstly, customers can book container and shipping services online and they no longer need to call sales representatives, which saves customers time, and improves their experience.

Secondly, customers who booked containers and other shipping services can view other services offered on the internet. It saves the marketing costs for APMM.

Moreover, APMM will made its back-end legacy infrastructure cloud-based

- The industry was dominated by corporate giants, it was difficult for MAERSK to achieve the same economies of scale -->lack of competitiveness.

2. Shipping container business suffered from price wars -->earnings were volatile.

3. New opportunity for company --> integrating the company’s existing port & logistics business into its shipping business.

- To make the process of shipping a container simple -->help their customers to address the need to have a strong logistic department within their own organization.

- Move from a product-focused approach to a solution-focused approach

4. To address the challenges posed by unforeseeable disruptions such as trade tensions, global warming, social unrest, labor problems, and pandemics, which had become more common in the last 10 years.

5. To enable a customer-focused strategy and think in new and different ways, requiring more agility, collaboration, and customer focus.

1. Achieved record-high earnings despite the significant challenges posed to the global supply chain by the pandemic in 2020.

2. By 2021, the MAERSK website (Maersk.com) had become one of the largest business-to-customer global websites, transacting more than $22 billion in one year.

3. Overall Engagement scores increased every year, from 3.84 in 2017 to 4.12 in 2020.

4. Increasing number of technology workforce consist of MAERSK employees, from 20% in 2016 to 60% in 2021 -->proportion of outsourcing staff is decreasing.

2. Need to constantly adapt their strategies to the changing environment.

2.The article states that the encouraging results in 2020 showed that MAERSK's plans were paying off, and the company achieved record-high earnings despite the challenges posed by the pandemic year 2020. Therefore, it can be inferred that the strategic transformation at APMM was successful. However, the article also highlights the challenges faced by APMM during its transformation journey, such as resistance to change, cultural differences, and the need to balance short-term and long-term goals.
3.The key strategies adopted by APMM to enable strategic business transformation, which include investing in digitalization, building a customer-centric culture, and focusing on sustainability. These strategies may have implications for HR, such as the need to develop new skills and capabilities, attract and retain talent, and foster a culture of innovation and continuous learning.

First of all, a significant part of this transformation involved finding new ownership structures for its four oil and oil-related companies (Maersk Oil, Maersk Drilling and Tankers). The objective was to ensure their continued growth and development outside APMM, which was crucial for the company to fully concentrate on its core business of transport and logistics.

Second, in 2016, APMM made a strategic decision to shift its focus from being a conglomerate to concentrating specifically on transport and logistics. This move was aimed at transforming major parts of the transport and logistics industry and positioning APMM as the world's leading global integrator of container logistics.

- Isolated and disrupted supply chain —> the need to switch to an integrated supply chain model

- Slow company’s growth + the business was commoditising ("Commoditise” refers to a process in which a product is essentially deemed identical to the same class of offering presented by a rival company. Commoditized products allow consumers to make purchasing decisions based solely on the price-tags of the item in question) —> the need to change the company’s vision: from a product-centric approach to a solution-based approach to increase the company’s competitive advantage

- Traditional, conservative culture was slowing down the company’s growth

- There was no cross-unit collaboration, too many silos, disengaged employees