As the “Yachting Capital of the World,” Fort Lauderdale, Florida, played host to the 55th annual Fort Lauderdale International Boat Show between October 30 and November 3, 2014, and team Prospus was there with a new innovative idea—software that can potentially change the way things get done in the yachting industry.
Prospus is incubating its first software product, VesselWise, built on its proprietary platform. VesselWise is a cloud-based yacht issues management software that enables yacht owners, captains and managers to effectively and efficiently manage issues with their yachts in collaboration with dealers, manufacturers, and service representatives. Co-founder of VesselWise, Brandon Rundquist, a captain with over 13 years of experience in the maritime industry, provided the original vision for VesselWise. In Brandon’s own words, “Warranty management shouldn’t be so difficult and inefficient. The manufacturers, dealers, owners and yacht crew need to all be working from a common ground, a common platform. It’s time to take the ‘war’ out of warranty management.”
In 2011, Brandon contacted Prospus to find out how he could make this warranty management application a reality. Marc Ragsdale, founder, and president of Prospus saw Brandon’s bigger vision. This is when Brandon and Marc, now the two co-founders of VesselWise, first began exploring ways to make it happen.
The basic idea behind VesselWise is to provide a common, collaborative platform to yacht owners, captains and managers to manage their yacht’s warranty process and service dialogue with their dealer, warranty, and service representatives. It enables yacht owners to get the most out of their warranty by streamlining the communication process between all parties involved. VesselWise facilitates this collaboration by providing an online web portal, vesselwise.com in combination with the VesselWise mobile app for iOS (soon to be available on Android and Windows devices as well).
Teams Prospus and VesselWise met with many captains and some of the biggest yacht dealers, manufacturers, and management companies at the show and discussed the general idea behind the VesselWise software. The response was excellent—they found the idea captivating and exciting. Mike, a captain for a MarineMax client with a newly built Azimut 84-foot custom luxury yacht said, “There’s no way any captain wouldn’t want to be using this app.” (As it turns out, the construction of this yacht was actually overseen by Brandon this past year in Viareggio, Italy.) Mike then displayed a notebook page full of issues he had written down while praising the idea of VesselWise and how it could massively simplify a cumbersome process.
Co-founders Brandon and Marc concluded the Fort Lauderdale trip with a number of positive takeaways. Marc said, “I think there is definitely a gap out there for us to fill, and we certainly have the product to make a difference here. This will bring dealers, captains, surveyors, manufacturers, and contractors together and simplify the way we currently approach yacht issue resolution and warranty management. Above all, the owners will benefit—bringing customer delight for yacht owners will be our ultimate accolade.”
Prospus is developing the cloud-based software for VesselWise. Marc Ragsdale, one of the co-founders of VesselWise, is also founder and president of Prospus, LLC and its wholly owned, India-based subsidiary Prospus Consulting Pvt. Ltd.
