All hands on tech.
After 40 years mastering their craft, this maritime firm brought us in to modernize how they actually run. Forty years of expertise meets the systems that match it.
A global firm. A legacy of excellence. A fleet of spreadsheets.
For 40 years, this cargo surveying leader had built a reputation on precision and trust. But behind the scenes, operations hadn't kept pace with the business. Spreadsheets multiplied. Institutional knowledge stayed in heads. Quotes took too long. Leadership couldn't see the full picture fast enough.
They came to us for a clear-eyed assessment of their tools and workflows. What started as a focused Jumpstart engagement turned into a long-haul Deployment Studio partnership, modernizing the way they quote, track, collaborate, and scale.
We didn't just digitize the work. We decoded it first.
Before we built anything, we ran an AI Jumpstart: a few focused weeks getting inside the business and proving where AI could create real leverage. From executives in the office to surveyors boarding vessels in Brazil, we interviewed stakeholders at every level. No workflow too niche, no input too small.
Once we had the picture, the same team continued into a Deployment Studio engagement to design, build, and roll out the new system alongside MARiTECH's people.
System mapping & opportunity assessment
- Stakeholder interviews across roles and geographies
- Workflow + tech stack mapping
- Opportunity assessment and roadmap
- Working prototype to prove the bet
Design, build, roll out, iterate
- System design and engineering
- Custom rate manager + automations
- Global rollout, training, and change management
- Ongoing support and refinement
A system that runs as well as their teams do.
We unpacked every process, handoff, and "that's how it's always been." What worked stayed. What didn't became targets for automation.
Untangling the workflows.
Every process, every handoff, every "we just do it that way." What worked stayed. What didn't became targets for automation. Over a dozen workflows ended up reshaped, saving real time every week across roles.
A quoting machine instead of a Rubik's Cube.
Quoting was like solving a Rubik's Cube every time: job type, port, client, rate, arrival dates, availability, endless permutations. We built a flexible rate manager that handles global, client-specific, and port-level pricing, all powered by Airtable's API. Complex logic, surfaced with clarity. What used to take account managers an hour now takes a few clicks.
Automations everywhere they mattered.
With the foundation in place, we automated the routine work, quote generation, job assignment, report delivery, status notifications. The team got their inputs into one central place; the system handled the rest. Less admin, more focus on the work that actually needs people.
Connecting the dots.
Teams kept their existing tools where they made sense. We introduced Airtable and Zapier as the connective tissue, creating one source of truth and unlocking automation across the board. The result: a unified operating layer across global offices, with significantly less manual data entry.
A global team, a global rollout.
A new system means nothing if the team can't use it. We created custom guides for every role, from client-facing account managers to surveyors boarding ships in Singapore. We mapped workflows in Miro for visual reference, ran live Zoom sessions across continents, set up "train the trainer" programs so department leads could lead with confidence, built admin training for power users to self-manage, and recorded everything in Loom so new teammates could onboard anytime.
Then we managed a clean cutover of data, prepped the team, and hit go-live without fireworks. Just quiet confidence.
Real-time visibility, automatic.
Leadership finally got real-time visibility into jobs, revenue, availability, and team performance. Crisp dashboards, updated automatically, accessible from anywhere.
We didn't vanish at launch.
As adoption grew, small refinements emerged. Thanks to the flexibility of the setup, we could tweak, adjust, and improve on the fly.
A generational shift, not just a technical one.
MARiTECH's transition wasn't just technical, it was generational. New leadership needed systems they could trust. Teams needed tools they could adopt. Investors needed proof of progress. We delivered all three.
Helping a team evolve from a family business running on institutional knowledge to a data-driven operation ready for growth has been one of those relationships that reminds us why we got into this business.
Expertise, unlocked by systems.
Spreadsheets retired. Data centralized. People empowered. Account managers focus on clients, not copy-pasting cells. Surveyors share insight, not just information. Leadership steers with data, not instinct. The legacy that built MARiTECH remains. Now it scales.
Time from job request to report delivery, reduced.
Across surveyor and account-manager workflows.
Eliminated manual email triage.
Recovered weekly across the global ops team.
In avoided hiring costs as volume scaled.
Same team carrying meaningfully more work across global offices.
Rate selection time for account managers, cut.
Powered by the new flexible rate manager.
Centralized system adoption.
Across survey and ops teams, post-rollout.