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Global Boat and Yacht ManufacturerUnified product, owner and warranty data without a full system replacement

The Challenge

A large boat and yacht builder with a worldwide presence had invested in technology for years: a custom dealer configurator, a CRM, an ERP and a general-purpose work-management platform that had grown far beyond its original purpose. It had grown its systems one need at a time. Each made sense when it was added. Together, they produced the friction most established companies know well.

  • IT investment isn’t paying off.The dealer configurator held every boat as ordered. The work-management platform held the same boats as built, keyed in by hand. Warranty claims, the process customers feel most, still arrived as paper forms and email.
  • Data everywhere, no single source of truth.Customer and owner data lived in several systems with no agreed master, and about a third of the business capabilities were duplicated. Nobody could say, from one place, what was fitted to a boat, who owned it and what was still under warranty.
  • Technology costs keep rising, and nobody can say what they buy.The work-management platform had grown into a large estate of apps and records, but fewer than a quarter of the apps were still in live use. The business was paying to run, secure and license an estate that was mostly dormant, dead or empty.
  • Many digital transformations, little to show for them.Earlier digitisation had moved paper into online forms without changing the process behind them. A vendor proposal to consolidate everything onto the work-management platform would still have needed a custom dealer portal, a separate reporting database and hand-keyed data.
  • IT budgets keep getting cut.A multi-year, all-at-once replacement was never going to survive changing budgets. Any plan had to deliver value in stages, each able to stand on its own.

The Solution

Instead of adding another system or replacing everything at once, ToolTwist designed a single platform that reuses the existing investment and retires the old platform in steps.

  • Shared platform, independent release cycles.The configurator, a new warranty application and a shared boat-and-owner record run in one TypeScript codebase, each deploying on its own release cycle, so the warranty team keeps its own pace without creating another data island.
  • Complete asset history for every boat.Each boat has one append-only record of what was ordered, built, delivered and fitted since, including who supplied and who fitted each item, so a claim is checked against the boat as it really is.
  • Clear data ownership.Every piece of data has exactly one system that may change it. Other systems receive it through an API, an event or a read-only copy, and reports read a separate analytics platform, never the live systems.
  • Unified dealer portal.Dealers worldwide sign in once to a single portal for configuring boats, lodging claims and registering handovers.
  • Phased legacy retirement.The old platform is retired in five steps: warranty, owner care, factory, the long tail and switch-off. Each step changes one group of people. Most of the estate is archived or dropped rather than rebuilt, and the long tail of forms and lists moves to Microsoft 365, which the business already licenses.
  • AI-assisted assessment with human oversight.AI reads claim photos and invoices, matches failed parts to the hull record and suggests an assessment. Assessors accept, change or reject each suggestion, and every one is recorded.

ToolTwist’s Role

ToolTwist led the work from strategy through to build.

  • Strategy and capability mapping.We mapped capabilities across the existing systems, decided where each fact should live, and set out the options for consolidation, including the vendor’s, against the same tests.
  • Architecture.We recorded architecture decisions covering the shared codebase, the hull record, the event backbone, identity, reporting and AI, with seven rules that stop the platform drifting back into islands.
  • Configurator modernisation.We rebuilt the dealer configurator on a modern TypeScript stack against the existing database, keeping users’ logins and workflows while closing every finding from a recent security audit.
  • Warranty application and hull record.We prototyped, estimated and built both, to the warranty team’s brief.
  • Migration engineering.We mapped the old platform’s full schema, built an adapter that mirrors its data within the vendor’s API limits, and moved years of historical warranty records into the new application.

Impact

  • Single source of truth per boat.Configuration, ownership and warranty cover come from one place, and reports and KPIs from one analytics platform, so the numbers that run the business agree.
  • Return on existing investment.The configurator was extended rather than replaced, and the business’s existing Microsoft 365 and Azure investment carries the platform and the long tail.
  • Digitised warranty process.Dealers lodge and track claims in one portal, assessors start from a completed claim checked against the boat’s actual configuration, and costs on supplier parts are recovered from the supplier.
  • Cost transparency.One cloud bill, cost tracked by feature, and licences that fall as each team moves off the old platform.
  • Resilience to budget changes.Each step stands on its own and pays back on its own, so the programme can pause between steps without losing what has been delivered.
  • Stronger data security.Plain-text credentials and loosely held personal data in the old platform were found and removed, and the configurator’s security findings were closed.

By connecting what it already owned instead of replacing it all at once, the builder now has one trusted record for every boat it has made, and a platform that can keep growing without adding another island.

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