McAllister Towing
“We could not be happier with Edoc’s customer service.” – Andrew McAllister, McAllister Towing
McAllister Towing is one of the oldest and largest marine towing and transportation companies in the United States, operating a fleet of more than 70 tugboats and 12 barges along the entire East Coast from Portland, ME to San Juan, PR. In each port, McAllister is engaged in ship docking, general harbor towing, coastal towing and bulk transportation servicing more than 600 major steamship companies.
Challenge: McAllister was operating with a legacy dispatch and invoicing system built by a third party vendor that was no longer available to maintain their source code or provide it to them. With the source code unavailable, McAllister was in need of a new system.
Proposed Solution: Edoc was chosen as the preferred vendor because one of McAllister’s competitors, Seabulk, had successfully implemented Edoc’s Helm Dispatch Manager™ for their harbor services. Seabulk had a similar model to McAllister, which was centralized billing and decentralized dispatch for their six ports.
In order to minimize operational disruption, Edoc also customized the user interface screens for Helm to match McAllister’s old system exactly. Edoc also customized the billing system to McAllister’s complex variable tariff and negotiation model, giving McAllister the flexibility to carry on with business as usual.
Outcome: McAllister’s 12 ports have gone fully live with Helm Dispatch Manager.
"We chose Edoc’s Helm system because of their experience with multi-port ship docking operations, and their willingness to tailor their system to our specific needs as part of their customization process. They also changed the user interface to closely match our old system. This is not common practice but we requested it as part of our change control process. With that said we could not be happier with Edoc’s customer service." - Andrew McAllister