Cloud-based operations platform for marine service providers — yacht management, boat yard operations, job scheduling, and dispatch
About Starboard Suite
Starboard Suite is a cloud-based operations platform covering the full service workflow for marine businesses. Job scheduling, technician dispatch, inventory management, customer records, and invoicing — all in one system designed for boat yards and yacht management operations that need more structure than a generic field service tool provides. The platform handles marine-specific complexity well. Job requests come in from vessel owners or management companies, get assigned to technicians, generate parts lists, and produce invoices when complete. Customer records carry vessel specifications, service history, and billing preferences. Inventory management tracks marine-specific consumables and parts at the dock level. Starboard Suite is the operational backbone for marine contractors who have outgrown spreadsheets but do not want software designed for plumbers and HVAC companies. It understands the difference between a day boat and a 60-foot cruiser, and between a routine oil service and a winterization package. What it does not address is what happens outside business hours, before the customer calls, or after the invoice closes. Marine emergencies — prop strikes, raw water pump failures, navigation electronics failures before a charter departure — generate calls at hours when a cloud platform cannot pick up the phone. Proactive maintenance scheduling requires outreach that Starboard Suite's scheduling module does not initiate. Post-job follow-up and customer retention happen outside the platform. An IRONBACK specialist handles those gaps, reading Starboard Suite's job and customer data to drive after-hours dispatch, preventive outreach, and automated parts ordering. See the [marine diesel and yacht repair](/industries/marine-diesel-repair) page for the full operational picture.
Starboard Suite covers job scheduling, technician dispatch, inventory management, customer records, and invoicing for marine service providers and boat yards. Cloud-based with mobile field access. Designed specifically for marine operations rather than adapted from generic field service software.
How an IRONBACK Specialist Works With Starboard Suite
Call Handling
After-hours marine emergencies route through AI voice agents that cross-reference the caller's vessel against Starboard Suite's customer database. A skipper calling at 11 PM about a steering failure gets the vessel record pulled — engine config, prior service notes, current job status if any work is open — and that context routes with the dispatch to the on-call technician. The agent captures the location, vessel condition, and safety status, which determines whether the call goes to the on-call line immediately or queues for morning.
Scheduling & Dispatch
Starboard Suite's service history becomes a proactive scheduling tool. Vessels approaching annual service intervals get outreach before owners call to request appointments. Charter boats with known operating schedules get maintenance windows proposed during scheduled layovers rather than during peak booking periods. The specialist batches upcoming service requirements by marina location and technician routing to reduce dead-transit time across a dispersed customer base.
Inventory & Parts
Open job orders in Starboard Suite carry parts requirements. The specialist reads those requirements and checks current inventory levels — triggering reorder sequences for consumables that fall below par levels and placing advance orders for parts required on upcoming scheduled maintenance. A yard operation that runs out of common consumables during peak season loses billable labor time while waiting for orders to arrive. Advance ordering, run from the job schedule, eliminates most of those gaps.
Follow-Up & Retention
Invoiced jobs close in Starboard Suite but the customer relationship does not stop there. A 30-day post-repair follow-up checks on repair satisfaction and flags any new issues while they are minor. Customers who authorized preventive maintenance work receive a reminder when the next interval approaches. Charter operators who used the yard for emergency work get a proactive pitch for annual maintenance contracts — where the yard controls the schedule rather than responding to failures.
Reporting & Intelligence
Monthly operational reports for yard management cover: job close rate by technician, parts utilization versus order levels, after-hours call volume and capture rate, and customer return frequency. Starboard Suite generates these metrics at the transaction level; the specialist compiles and delivers them in a format that informs staffing, inventory, and marketing decisions.
What Starboard Suite Does Not Solve
Starboard Suite is good at what it does. Here is what it does not do — and what that costs you.
Marine emergencies hit at night and on weekends. Starboard Suite is open on a computer screen at the dock office. The dock office is closed. Calls go to a voicemail no one checks until Monday.
After-hours voice agents handle marine emergency triage — vessel safety status, location, nature of the problem — and route accordingly. True emergencies go to the on-call technician with Starboard Suite customer data already pulled. A yard missing an average of 5 after-hours calls per week at $700 average job value loses $182,000/year in work that goes to competitors or never gets done at all [industry estimate].
Parts stockouts stop billable work. A technician pulls an impeller to replace it and there are none on the shelf. The job sits until parts arrive. At $45/hour for a technician waiting on parts, a 3-hour parts delay costs $135 per incident.
Inventory management runs proactively against Starboard Suite's open job schedule. Par levels for high-turn parts stay stocked relative to current job load, not relative to arbitrary reorder points set once and never adjusted. Eliminating 4 stockout incidents per month at $135 each saves $6,480/year in direct labor waste — plus the technician time recovered for billable work.
Annual maintenance customers are not retained systematically. The yard does good work but nobody reaches out when the next service is due. Customers book the first yard that calls them in January.
Service history in Starboard Suite drives a proactive annual outreach calendar. Every closed job with a service interval becomes a future outreach trigger. Contractors who contact customers first — with a specific proposal based on prior work — close at roughly twice the rate of those waiting for inbound calls. On a 200-vessel active customer base, a 10% retention improvement at $2,200 average annual value adds $44,000/year.
Customer-facing service reports require manual compilation. A yacht management company wants a quarterly summary of work performed across their managed vessels. A service coordinator spends 4 hours building it from Starboard Suite exports.
Quarterly reports generate automatically from Starboard Suite job data — work completed, parts used, upcoming intervals, and cost tracking against annual service agreements. Contractors who deliver this level of reporting to management companies retain those contracts at higher rates and justify premium labor rates.
Real-World Example
A 14-person boat yard operating at a 180-slip marina. Uses Starboard Suite for all job management and invoicing. One service coordinator, one parts manager, five technicians, and two subcontractors for specialized work. Revenue: $2.1M/year. No after-hours coverage. Peak season April through October.
After-hours calls: approximately 6/week during the 28-week peak season, 0% answered. At $680 average emergency value: $114,240 in missed calls [industry estimate]. Parts stockouts: 5–6 incidents per month, averaging 2.5 hours of technician standby at $43/hour burdened: $26,875/year. Annual maintenance outreach: coordinator-dependent, inconsistent. An estimated 22% of maintenance customers book elsewhere because contact was too slow. Service reports for management companies: 3 hours/report monthly across 4 accounts: $2,520/year in coordinator labor.
After-hours AI voice agents go live week three with Starboard Suite customer data access. Proactive inventory management runs against open job schedule. Annual outreach sequences run from service history. Management company reports generate automatically.
Frequently Asked Questions
No. Starboard Suite handles job management, dispatch, inventory, and invoicing — all of that stays. The specialist covers what the platform was not designed to handle: after-hours calls, proactive customer outreach, advance parts ordering, and automated reporting for management company clients.
Boat yards are the primary fit here. High seasonal volume, after-hours emergency exposure, and parts management complexity are exactly what the specialist addresses. Yacht management companies have an additional compliance reporting layer — also covered — but yard operations are the core use case.
The [$7,500 AI Operations Assessment](/audit) maps the integration approach in week one. Starboard Suite's API and export capabilities allow read access to customer records, job history, and inventory data. The specialist operates from that data without requiring changes to how the yard staff uses the platform.
An on-call technician handles the repair. The voice agent handles the intake — qualifying whether the call is a true emergency, capturing vessel details and location, and delivering that context to the technician before they call back. Without the agent, the technician gets a voicemail and calls a stranger at 1 AM with no vessel information. With it, they call back with the customer profile and prior service notes already in hand.
Two weeks auditing your after-hours call volume, parts stockout frequency, annual maintenance retention rate, and coordinator time allocation — all against Starboard Suite data. Every gap gets a dollar figure before any automation builds. Also see related integrations: [Seahub](/integrations/seahub) and [Yacht Logic Pro](/integrations/yacht-logic-pro). $50,000 value guarantee.
The $7,500 AI Operations Assessment audits your after-hours call volume, parts management, and annual maintenance retention against your Starboard Suite data. Two weeks. Every uncaptured revenue category documented. $50,000 value guarantee.
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