Live on your own voyages in six weeks
Not a demonstration environment. One real cargo, from a broker email to a closed claim, running alongside your current system while your desk keeps working the way it works today.
Replacing the system that runs your book
The features are the easy part. Earning enough trust to switch off a system that has run the business for two decades is the work.
Your numbers tie before you trust them
The calculations are rebuilt from your contracts and tested against voyages your current system already closed. Where the two disagree, we find out why before anything is accepted.
You keep a way back
Your current system stays operable and the position can be reconstructed in it until the final step. That is what makes the programme reversible rather than a single date everyone dreads.
Cutover is a threshold, not a date
Each workflow moves across only after it has run clean for an agreed period. Nothing is switched off because a plan said this was the week.
Your rules get written down
Every convention your current system encodes but nobody documented surfaces during the rebuild. For most desks that record is worth having on its own.
The one number you cannot tie
Find one number you cannot reconcile, and you will stop believing every number after it. That is how a parallel run stops being a phase and becomes the way you work: two systems, two sets of figures, and nobody willing to sign either.
So CapesizeOS reproduces voyages you have already closed before it asks you to trust a live one. Laytime, hire and the voyage result are rebuilt from your own charter parties and run back against fixtures you have settled. Where a figure differs, you get the clause that caused it rather than a variance report.
- Your open voyages come across as live records. Contracts, costs, events and accruals, tied out one voyage at a time.
- Counterparty duplicates resolve to legal identities, which is where your current data usually disagrees with itself first.
- Differences land daily, while each one is still a single voyage rather than a pattern you discover in month three.
Variance between the two systems on the same voyages, by week
Four phases, each ending in a decision you make
None of them depends on a promise made before the data was seen.
- 1
Prove the data
Extract and profile the historical record. Capture the baselines. Rebuild and test the core calculations against closed voyages. No new workflow ships.
Ends with An honest written answer on what the history supports, and a baseline nobody can argue with later.
- 2
Land the operator desk
Port calls, events, disbursement control, laytime, claims, time bars and the early arrival ledger. The smallest blast radius and the fastest evidenced return.
Ends with Claims served from the new system inside the bar, with the pack assembled automatically.
- 3
Land the trade desk
Signal capture, estimates, negotiation, fixture, chain comparison and handover. The spine closes and one cargo runs end to end.
Ends with A voyage result that finance accepts without a spreadsheet in the middle.
- 4
Cut over and extend
Workflow by workflow cutover, decommissioning, then the second layer: quote guidance if the gate passed, contract portfolio, position book.
Ends with A full period closed in the new system, and the old one read-only.
The operator desk lands first, on purpose
The trading desk usually sponsors this work, so starting post-fixture surprises people. Claims are where the return shows up in weeks rather than quarters, where a mistake costs a query rather than a fixture, and where the event and document foundation gets built that the trading layer later depends on. The trade desk is worth waiting one phase for.
Three things we need from you
The commitment is the part that gets underestimated, and it is the difference between a system the desk uses and a system the desk is given.
Source and data access
A readable copy of your current system and one person who can answer why a module does what it does. Reading twenty five years of working logic is faster and safer than re-deriving it, and it is the single largest reason six weeks is possible.
Two years of claims history
Demurrage calculated, served, accepted and collected, plus the value of claims that expired unserved. This is the number every later claim about return is argued against.
Named people, booked
One trader, one operator, one finance contact, in the calendar rather than nominated in a meeting. Half a day a week each, two full days in the final fortnight.
Measured against your baseline, captured first
A number that has no before is decoration. Every measure below is baselined from your own record before the build starts.
| Measure | What it tells you | Baseline captured first |
|---|---|---|
| Claims lost to time bar | The clearest and least arguable return in the system. The target is zero. | Value of claims that expired unserved over the last two years. |
| Demurrage realisation rate | Of the demurrage calculated as due, how much is actually collected. | Calculated against collected, by counterparty, over a full year. |
| Time to first offer | Whether signal capture is genuinely faster, which in a fast market decides who gets the business. | Median time from circular received to firm offer sent today. |
| Estimate to actual variance | Whether estimates are improving, and specifically where they are systematically wrong. | Dispersion, not only the mean. A desk wrong by plus and minus alternately has a mean of zero and no control. |
| Chain mismatches caught | Term mismatches surfaced before fixing rather than discovered at claim. | Historical cases where a pass-through failed, sampled from your record. |
| Manual touches removed | Whether the desk's day actually changed, measured in work removed rather than clicks saved. | Observed time on circular processing, estimate preparation and document chasing. |
One cargo, end to end, on real voyages
A trader prices and fixes inside it. An operator runs the voyage to completion inside it. The claim is served inside the time bar from evidence the system assembled, and the voyage result agrees with finance without a spreadsheet in the middle.
Your old system still runs the book at week six, and it should. The position layer, the portfolio and quote guidance come next, each sequenced behind the layer it depends on. One voyage, correct. Then twenty. Then the book.