Standardizing global performance management with a strategic, unified KPI framework
Established a global "single version of the truth" across regions using Looker’s semantic layer
Eliminated manual data extraction and preparation, enabling on-demand access to governed insights
Replaced an unstable legacy environment with cloud-native reliability and high uptime
Drove effective adoption by delivering customized training using real-world business data and company-specific context
Ocean Network Express (ONE) replaced fragmented legacy BI with a unified Looker and BigQuery data platform. Using Looker’s semantic layer and a 'Hub and Spoke' model, ONE established global KPIs and is preparing for AI-driven conversational analytics.
Ocean Network Express (ONE) replaced fragmented legacy BI with a unified Looker and BigQuery data platform. Using Looker’s semantic layer and a 'Hub and Spoke' model, ONE established global KPIs and is preparing for AI-driven conversational analytics.
Charting a course through data fragmentation
Ocean Network Express (ONE) was formed through the integration of three legacy shipping companies, a merger that brought together not just fleets, but three distinct IT landscapes. In the early days, the business intelligence environment was described as "fragmented". The organization relied heavily on an on-premise solution, which suffered from significant performance issues and frequent downtime. Reports were often tabular rather than visual and were distributed using email schedules to outdated distribution lists, resulting in data that was often ignored or consumed in silos.
Alongside this on-premise solution, other BI tools were being used on siloed data, leading to a lack of governance where different teams would generate conflicting reports-comparing "apples to oranges" rather than operating from a shared reality. To resolve this, ONE initiated one of the most extensive evaluation processes in Looker’s history. An evaluation committee composed of cross-regional stakeholders was formed to ensure a unified decision.
The team conducted a rigorous "bake-off," building identical proofs of concept in both Looker and shortlisted BI tools to test real-world implementation. While the visualization capabilities of other shortlisted BI tools were strong, ONE required a platform that offered more than just charts. The decisive factor was Looker’s "semantic modeling layer". This feature promised the ability to define business logic once and deploy it everywhere, ensuring a "single version of the truth" and robust governance-capabilities that were critical for ONE’s strategy to migrate their data warehousing to BigQuery and modernize their data culture.
It was ultimately the semantic modeling layer which was the niche that pushed the product over the line. We realized that Looker was more than just a BI tool; it was a data platform that offered the governance and monitoring capabilities we were missing.
Tom Waller
Global Head of Product Owner, Data and Analytics - ONE
Anchoring governance and scaling innovation
ONE did not simply "lift and shift" their legacy reports; they fundamentally reimagined their data architecture to support a global strategy. To manage the complex migration of datasets and reports from the company's legacy environment, the team built a custom metadata ingestion tool to track the conversion of report inventories, ensuring nothing was lost in transition.
Looker is the backbone of our global KPI framework. It enables us to drive strategic alignment and focus on decision-making in a way that was simply impossible under our legacy systems.
John Jabaraj
Global Data Center of Excellence Lead, ONE
A critical component of this architectural overhaul was the adoption of a "Hub and Spoke" data modeling concept. The team created a central "Hub" to house common primary data such as office, location, customer, ensuring that core metrics were defined identically across the organization. Individual business domains, or "Spokes," then inherited this code to build their specific models. This structure prevented the duplication of work and ensured that a field like "booking status" meant the same thing in every dashboard, globally.
Simultaneously, ONE is transforming their performance management by implementing a comprehensive KPI Management Framework.
This ongoing initiative goes beyond simple dashboard development; it involves aligning stakeholders, redesigning metrics for best practices, and building Looker dashboards to support the execution. A pioneering example of this new standard is the global Sales Goal Dashboard, which replaced disjointed regional reports with a unified view. This tool demonstrates the power of the PDCA (Plan-Do-Check-Act) cycle, allowing users to not only monitor "Red, Amber, Green" performance indicators but to take specific recovery actions to ensure business goals are achieved.
Recognizing that a global platform requires a robust foundation, ONE partnered with Joon Solutions to transform Looker System Activity into a strategic governance engine. Guided by ONE’s strategic vision for data insights, Joon Solutions developed a sustainable technical capability to ingest Looker’s built-in system activity data into ONE's own version.
This architecture enables extended data retention and allows ONE to enrich default insights with internal organizational structures and demographical data, and additional metrics and usability features. This has allowed ONE to gain greater insights into how Looker is used and adoption which has been a key to our success.
While ONE designed and led its own comprehensive training for Standard users and Viewers, including a certified Train-the-Trainer program, Joon Solutions was engaged to deliver specialized LookML training for ONE's developer community.
Looking ahead, ONE is building on this semantic foundation to enable "Conversational Analytics." This AI-driven initiative will allow business users to ask natural language questions of their data, covering scenarios and insights that standard dashboards cannot address.
Ocean Network Express (ONE), headquartered in Singapore, is one of the world's leading liner shipping companies. It operates a fleet of over 260 vessels with a capacity exceeding 2 million TEUs. Through its extensive global network, ONE provides reliable container shipping services to over 120 countries.
Industries: Maritime Transport and Logistics industry, specifically focusing on Global Container Shipping.
Location: Singapore
Products: Google Cloud, BigQuery, Looker, Vertex AI, SAP on Google Cloud, Apigee, Gemini Enterprise, AlloyDB for PostgreSQL
About Google Cloud partner — Joon Solutions
Joon Solutions architect modern data platforms that don't stop at dashboards. Semantic layers and governance built from day one give you analytics now and a clear path to predictions, AI-powered decisions, and autonomous intelligence.
