Customer Background
Scorpio Group is one of the world’s leading ship management companies, operating a modern and efficient fleet of over 130 vessels. Headquartered in Monaco, the company is recognised for its commitment to operational excellence, digital transformation, and environmental responsibility.
Paolo Magonio, Head of Procurement at Scorpio, oversees all procurement and strategic operations for the global fleet — ensuring every transaction supports efficiency, cost control, and compliance.
Watch the full Scorpio video story:
The Challenge: Fragmentation in Maritime Procurement Systems
The maritime industry is at a pivotal stage of digital transformation. While technology has become more accessible, it has also created a new challenge: fragmentation.
“The maritime industry in the supply chain is facing issues and opportunities. There is a lot of opportunity brought in by the availability of technology. Companies that were not able before to invest in technology now find it available at arm’s length.”
However, with too many solutions for example e-invoicing being developed independently, processes risk becoming more complex rather than streamlined.
“The risk is that there are so many solutions being developed, and we need to streamline and help the industry develop solutions which are robust and can serve the industry over time — bringing harmonisation and standardisation, rather than creating further disaggregation in the data and processes.”
Scorpio saw that the growing number of owner-developed procurement portals was creating inefficiency across the industry, especially for suppliers who had to interface with multiple systems.
“If every ship manager and every shipowner develops their own portal, the suppliers will have very little ability to automate processes and interface with each one.”
The Solution: A Unified Platform for Maritime Procurement
To overcome this challenge, Scorpio turned to ShipServ, part of the Marcura Group, which already provided a trusted, established procurement network.
“ShipServ, being already very useful on the transactional side, could represent a proper solution to serve all the suppliers and all the customers.”
By integrating ShipServ into its procurement operations, Scorpio has achieved automation across RFQ, invoicing and quotation processes, reducing manual work and ensuring consistent data flows between buyers and suppliers.
“The cooperation between ShipServ and Scorpio is long-dated, in order to automate the process of RFQ and quotation. That was a good progress and a good implementation.”
ShipServ’s ability to connect and interface multiple stakeholders within a single ecosystem has proven particularly valuable:
“We believe the ability of ShipServ integrating and interfacing different suppliers and buyers is really a plus in this particular activity.”
The Impact: Towards a More Standardised and Efficient Maritime Supply Chain
Scorpio’s collaboration with ShipServ extends beyond efficiency — it’s about driving industry-wide standardisation.
“The maritime industry in the supply chain and purchasing side is really duplicating processes. On the vendor management as well, each manager and shipowner is developing their own onboarding procedures and platforms, which creates a lot of duplication. The data is not consistent, the data is not shared.”
With ShipServ, Scorpio sees a path forward to reduce duplication, improve data consistency, and simplify supplier management.
“A strong player already providing services in this area would be best placed to develop a system that allows suppliers to enter their certifications, data, and bank details — and validate those details to pass on to the buyer side.”
By leveraging ShipServ’s expertise, Scorpio supports a more connected, transparent, and standardised procurement ecosystem — one that benefits both buyers and suppliers across the maritime value chain.
