Jody Wallin started working at Bertha Boatworks in Pequot, Minn., in 2020. Her husband had been with the marina, and she helped the staff on occasion. She joined the team full time to help make the marina run more efficiently.
By March 2021, she persuaded the owner to upgrade from an MS-DOS program — the kind IBM developed in the early ’80s — to Dockmaster marina management software. “We had been looking at software for years, and another marina we know on the river had been using Dockmaster for 10 years,” Wallin says. “Dockmaster was the one that seemed to fit our needs best.”
Dockmaster is one of many management software programs that can be an asset to a dealer, marina or service facility. Often shorthanded as DMS, for dealer management software, it makes it easier to track sales, rentals, and service and parts records. Some types of DMS also make it easier for a customer to communicate with the marina for things like rentals or receiving a text update when a boat is in for service. In an industry not always known for its forward thinking, some company owners remain skeptical about technology, but virtually any business can benefit from DMS.
Built From Scratch
Bertha Boatworks is a seasonal, mom-and-pop marina business. The company has slip rentals, boat sales and rentals, and service and storage. Including the 72-year-old owner and seasonal crewmembers, there are 15 employees during the height of the summer.
When it comes to DMS offerings, Dockmaster is known for being the most applicable for smaller operations. Wallin says the biggest benefits include “the ability to do things so much more quickly. I can break out a work order faster. Dockmaster bills has freed up tons of things that take up my time at the marina.”
For example, after the marina implemented Dockmaster, it added a computer at the fuel dock with four credit-card readers. Wait times for customers decreased, and Wallin could track fuel usage to make sure she could plan ahead for busier times. But it’s the repetitive work that Wallin says Dockmaster has helped with the most. She sends out customer bills three times a month, seven months a year. “I guarantee it has saved over an hour every time,” she says. “Those are five-minute phone calls, but on a busy day in July, if I don’t have to talk to 10 different people, that’s huge. Being able to track purchasing, special orders is a big time-saver.”
For marinas in northern climates, much of the annual business is winterization and storage. That means having enough parts to perform those tasks, but not overstocking. “We can track our product usage so much quicker, and we have a large parts room,” Wallin says. “At the end of July, I start going through all our filters and Sta-Bil [fuel stabilizer], and we can base our order on what we used last year.”
The only thing Dockmaster didn’t have for Bertha Boatworks was the ability to manage rentals. So the marina went with a local software company for that.
Dockmaster was founded in 1984 as custom software. It moved to a Windows platform in 2002. It can interface with third-party applications for tracking leads or customer inquiries. In computer-speak, a DMS is a back-office system. “We have the capability to do from small up to enterprise,” says Jodi Newfield, associate director of sales at Dockmaster, which is based in Clearwater, Fla. “What sets us apart is that we have the ability to do all three types of use cases — marina, service and dealer.”
While other DMS programs have been adapted from powersports, RV or the automotive realm, Dockmaster started for the marine industry with something of a focus on marinas and rack-storage facilities. Newfield says the company tried working with the RV industry but decided there were too many differences.
The software uses two third-party applications, SpeedyDock and BoatCloud, so a boat owner can schedule a launch on the app. Dockmaster also integrates with the Kenect app that is used for sales leads. For example, with SpeedyDock, the app reads from Dockmaster where the boat is located, and if the customer is adding items. Dockmaster creates a point-of-sale transaction to Dockmaster.
The system has about 600 users, and close to half of them are dealers. They are mostly based in North America, and Newfield estimates that the company has a 97% retention rate. “I would say 99 percent of the time, if we lose a customer, it’s part of an acquisition,” she says. She wouldn’t provide specific costs for the service, except to say that the upfront costs and monthly fees are similar to Lightspeed.
Like many other DMS programs, Dockmaster can be used to track service, rentals, slips, fuel, sales and more. “Just parts and inventory can pay for Dockmaster on its face because there’s no way things aren’t getting missed,” Newfield says.
The other area where Dockmaster sets itself apart is its marina module. An automobile or RV dealer doesn’t rent parking spaces. This is just part of what makes marinas unique for DMS providers. “The marinas want to know how much they are making on these slips, where is the underutilization,” Newfield says.
One area where DMS developers had to adapt was online stores. “Many marinas, even if they’re not selling online, they’re wholesaling, and we have order entry, which is easier than a point-of-sale ticket,” Newfield says.
For training, Dockmaster offers online classes, and there are customer-support representatives available by phone and online. The company says it plans to acquire a marine software company in 2024 but didn’t provide additional details.
Another business founded strictly for the marine industry is Total Control Software in Sherwood, Ark. Bill Rollins started the company in 1992 when a dealer in Little Rock asked him to write a program to keep track of parts and service. Today, the company has more than 400 customers in the marine and RV segments. “We are a family-owned business,” says vice president Andrea Ferricher-Delp. “My father and mom started it. I came in over 23 years ago. When you call us, you get the same people. We don’t outsource our support.”
Total Control Software can help a dealer maintain parts, keep track of work orders for technicians, and integrate parts vendors for easier ordering. “Right now the prices on these parts are changing on a daily basis,” she says. “Efficiency is key in any dealership, and being able to organize and cut down on lack of communication is huge.”
She likes working with the smaller mom-and-pop shops and says that word of mouth is still the best referral program. “There are still people who haven’t digitized at all,” Ferricher-Delp says. “That’s my kind of customer.”
Total Control Software starts at $4,025 for the program and can range up to around $10,000. Support fees start at $650 annually and go up to $950. Once a business has the program, it can discontinue the support fee.
The Big Guns
Perhaps the best-known name in DMS is Lightspeed, which has been in the business for nearly 40 years and has 3,700 total dealers in North America, about 1,000 of which sell and service boats. Rob Grant, director of manufacturer solutions for Lightspeed, says the bulk of the company’s marine customers are dealers on the water geared toward sales and service. OneWater Marine, for example, is a client.
Grant says the most challenging thing about writing software for boat dealers is the complexity of all the equipment on a single model. “We’re dealing with multiple units on a single transaction,” he says. “I’ve got a boat, possible multiple motors and trailers, and they all come back around in service.”
Lightspeed started with a powersports dealer in Salt Lake City that needed inventory management. The company’s heaviest penetration is still powersports, but Grant calls marinas a close second, followed by RV. Lightspeed offers dealers lead tracking through a company’s website, or via a third-party marketplace. The lead flows into the software, which can track the activity through the final sale. The system allows a dealer’s business office to finalize the sale, set up finance and insurance, and generate all the documents a customer needs to sign.
Once the relationship is established, Lightspeed also has a texting solution written into its software for further communication with the customer, including service reminders and billing. “We pride ourselves on our customer service,” Grant says. “Our dealer network talks with our customer support team and has input on the development we’re putting to the software.”
Initial setup for a Lightspeed account starts at $3,500, and a dealer pays $350 to $450 per month for a cloud-based subscription. The company’s main office is in Salt Lake City, and there are about 270 employees. Lightspeed does partner with websites such as Boat Trader and Yacht Trader, and recently revamped its website to include blog posts and other original content.
Yet another option is IDS Astra, which also was developed in the 1980s as an outgrowth of a parts distributorship. It’s a DMS that works with larger companies, such as Russell Marine in Alabama, Strong’s Marine in New York, Port Harbor Marine in Maine, and MarineMax. Parent company Constellation Software is based in Canada with a U.S. headquarters for IDS in Raleigh, N.C. It doesn’t release numbers for sales, customers or employees. “We’re a multilocation marine solution,” says Marc Hertert, sales manager at IDS. “We work really well for someone who is trying to customize a solution around the operation itself.”
IDS has modules for marinas, boatyards, rentals and storage. The software uses integrated accounting, unlike the systems used by smaller companies. Hertert says that if a company tries to link DMS to separate accounting software in a large enterprise, “once you break that data chain, you can’t audit backward,” he says. “A dealer is going to grow to a certain level where if it tries to run accounting software integration, it’s no longer feasible.”
For a smaller, remotely located customer, IDS can offer a locally installed DMS, but most customers use a hybrid cloud-based system. Hertert says that IDS is also the only DMS company that works with publicly traded customers.
Because many IDS customers are in active acquisition modes, the DMS provider has been able to share the burden of getting a recently purchased dealership up and running. “We’ve been doing a heck of a lot of this work that puts us into a good position to help folks who are growing via acquisition,” Hertert says.
Open Book
Falling somewhere in between Dockmaster and Lightspeed is BiT Dealership Software in Knoxville, Tenn. Company president and CEO Edward MacFawn purchased it in 2005, and the business has been around since about 1985. “It was marketed as BiT marine software until 2009 or so, when in the depths of the recession, I looked around and said, ‘Who else could we sell software to?’ ” MacFawn says.
The company was always in sales and service, and has updated its software to cover marinas, repair and slips. “We were the first to launch a web-based marine DMS, in 2013,” MacFawn says.
Today, BiT DMS has 19 employees. Nine are software developers, which is similar to the ratios quoted for the larger DMS companies. “We’re doing lots of work on our system and trying to move it ahead and stay innovative,” MacFawn says. “We launched embedded text messaging last year. We have the ability to email within the system, so let’s send text messages within the same system.” BiT DMS says that it has a 90% open rate on text messages.
While the company doesn’t release annual sales figures, fees are on the company website. There’s no upfront fee and no contract, which sets apart BiT DMS. For a single location that uses a parts point-of-sale and inventory-management module, the monthly fee is $270, or an annual agreement is $238 per month. Add sales, finance and insurance, and lead management, and the rate goes up to $405 monthly, or $357 per month on the annual agreement. A module for slips and storage management, and launch requests, take the numbers to $540 and $476, respectively.
“The old way of buying software and owning it and installing it on your server is all behind us,” MacFawn says. “We have the technologists who can manage the server and keep the data secure. There’s no need for the big up-front fee.”
Since the company’s offerings became cloud-based, BiT DMS revenues have gone up 400%. The cloud-based approach sold Bruce Hawthorne, who with his wife, Leslie, owns Camano Marine, a sales and service dealer in Camano Island, Wash. “I met up with Ed at the Land ‘N’ Sea show, and what was appealing was the fact that we could do a month-to-month thing.”
Hawthorne’s business is a dealership that offers sales, service, storage and power products to keep money coming in during the off-season. “We were actually a beta store for them and got a chance to figure out what was going on,” Hawthorne says. “The other thing that pushed me towards BiT was that we needed to have a system that was easy to understand.”
Camano Marine is a small business with nine employees, so being able to increase efficiency was critical. “The guys in the shop have their laptop. I remember I wanted to do inventory and scan a bar code and have the product populate, and I started doing it on my phone, and I do it on my tablet now,” Hawthorne says. “As long as you have an internet connection and can get a Chrome browser, you’re all set.”
This article was originally published in the October 2023 issue.
