Ionian Boatworks
A Lefkas boatyard servicing 140+ vessels annually eliminated paper-based job tracking, ended missed service reminders, and secured €65,000 in EU funding — going live before the spring haul-out season.
Vessels/year
140+
Team
8 staff
Location
Lefkas, GR
Engagement
10 weeks
Five problems.
One root cause.
Every problem traced back to the same origin: manual processes built for a 20-boat operation trying to support a 140-boat workload. The boatyard had grown — the systems hadn't.
Maintenance schedules on paper and WhatsApp
Upcoming haul-outs, antifouling cycles, and annual surveys were tracked across handwritten notebooks and a shared WhatsApp group. Technicians arrived for jobs that weren't ready. Boats left the yard without completing all scheduled work.
No parts inventory visibility
Staff walked to the warehouse to check stock before every job. Parts were ordered twice, or not ordered at all. Two peak-season jobs were delayed three weeks waiting for antifouling paint that was already in a different storage bay.
Missed service reminders cost repeat customers
Annual haul-outs, engine services, and safety inspections were due dates that lived in a single shared calendar. When the calendar owner was on leave, reminders weren't sent. Three long-standing customers moved to competitors who proactively contacted them.
Workshop hours not tracked against jobs
Technicians logged hours on paper timesheets submitted weekly. By the time a job ran over budget, it was already finished. No visibility into which job types were unprofitable until the end of each quarter.
€65k EU grant left unclaimed
Ionian Boatworks had been operating for 11 years with no awareness that ESPA digitization grants applied to boatyards. No adviser had ever flagged the opportunity.
Processes first.
Technology second.
Workshop audit
2 weeksWe mapped the full job lifecycle — from customer intake through haul-out, work completion, and launch. We found 18 manual steps and 4 points where work stalled waiting for information that already existed somewhere in the business but couldn't be accessed.
Workflow redesign
1 weekBefore recommending any software, we restructured the workflows. Redundant steps were eliminated. The new process had 9 steps instead of 18, removed all paper handoffs, and created a single source of truth for job status accessible to every technician.
Technology selection
1 weekWith the redesigned workflows as a spec, we selected tools to serve them: a marine job management system, inventory platform with warehouse bin locations, and a customer-facing service portal. Every tool was chosen because a specific workflow step required it.
Implementation & training
6 weeksSystems were configured to the new workflows. All 8 staff were trained in two cohorts. Go-live was timed for late autumn — outside peak haul-out season — to allow the team to build confidence before the spring rush.
Funding secured
Parallel trackThe ESPA digitization grant application was prepared and submitted in parallel with implementation. Approval arrived 9 weeks after submission — €65,000 applied directly against the project investment.
Four systems.
One connected boatyard.
Digital job management
Every job from intake to launch tracked in a single system. Technicians see their daily work queue on a tablet. Job status visible in real time to the front office without walking to the workshop.
Parts inventory with bin locations
Stock levels, reorder points, and physical warehouse locations for every part. Technicians check availability from their tablet before starting a job. Auto-alerts when stock falls below reorder thresholds.
Customer service portal
Boat owners view their full maintenance history, upcoming service dates, and live job progress. Automated reminders sent 8 weeks and 2 weeks before each scheduled service — no manual follow-up required.
Workshop analytics
Hours per job tracked in real time against estimate. Technician utilisation rate, average job duration by service type, and margin per job — reported weekly. Unprofitable job types identified within the first month.
Interactive demo
The platform described above is live.
Explore the staff job board, move jobs through the workflow, manage parts inventory, and view the workshop analytics dashboard — all running on real data.
Measured outcomes.
Six months post-launch.
71%
reduction in admin hours per job
€65k
EU grant secured
0
missed service reminders since launch
23%
increase in repeat customer bookings
"Every year we said we needed a system. Every year we bought something that didn't stick because the process underneath it was broken. Digiform fixed the process first — the system was almost the easy part. The grant covered most of it anyway."
Stavros Alexiou
Managing Director, Ionian Boatworks
This scenario didn't stay fictional.
The boatyard work-management system designed in this engagement became Argos Works — Digiform's platform for marine service businesses. argosworks.gr →