Portnetic
Portnetic teamed up with BoatyardX to design, build and launch a pioneering automobile export/import platform for trade garages, to address the post-Brexit challenges of purchasing vehicles from UK car forecourts and auction houses.
INDUSTRY
Automotive
LOCATION
Liverpool, UK
Key Challenges
- In January 2021, at the end of the post-Brexit transition period, the invoicing, tax, customs and excise duty procedures for trade garages importing used cars from the UK became complex, time consuming and cost prohibitive.
Solution
- A SaaS cloud-based platform, developed in partnership with BoatyardX, that allows trade garages to quickly and easily acquire their chosen used cars from UK garage forecourts and auction houses, with the Portnetic solution managing purchasing and import/export documentation – delivering the vehicle directly to the trade garage’s forecourt.
- Substantially reduced time and resources, and associated costs, for trade garages and dealers when importing cars from the UK.
- An end-to-end solution which offers trade garages and dealers a clear audit trail and peace of mind, in the knowledge that all required documentation and other related matters are completed correctly.
Company Overview
“The speed of delivery by BoatyardX has been exceptional – allowing us to get to market ahead of schedule”
says Conor Slattery CEO, Portnetic
What did the Portnetic / BoatyardX partnership deliver?
- An online portal to manage the workflows associated with vehicle purchasing and export/import logistics
- These workflows allow trade garages to request new vehicle purchases, check the status of their current purchases, and view their past vehicle purchases.
- A secure repository for all documentation associated with the vehicle purchase and importation – to support regulatory, tax and audit compliance
- An ability to manage current vehicle purchases by streamlining the customs and transportation management processes
- A solution that allows Portnetic to scale their business to large volumes of both vehicles per annum and trade garage customers.
The Challenge
Upon the UK leaving the EU following Brexit, difficulties arose with regards to the importation of cars and other vehicles from UK car forecourts and garages. Brexit resulted in a significantly greater level of regulatory, tax and audit compliance procedures – with a requirement for increased levels of documentation for garages importing vehicles from the UK.
Typically these procedures are predominantly manual and paper-based, with communications via e-mail and phone calls. As a result the costs of car importation is significantly higher compared with pre-Brexit, with substantial resources required by individual garages to navigate the new post-Brexit processes.
The Solution
The Portnetic solution, developed by BoatyardX, allows users to digitally manage the workflows associated with vehicle purchasing and export/import logistics. These digitised workflows allow trade garages to request new vehicle purchases, check the status of their current purchases, and view their past vehicle purchases.
A secure repository for all documentation associated with the vehicle purchase and importation has been developed – to support regulatory, tax and audit compliance.
In addition, the solution allows Portnetic employees to manage current vehicle purchases by streamlining the customs and transportation management process – resulting in improved staff efficiencies.
“Our partnership with BoatyardX has exceeded our expectations – we are delighted with the quality of service provided by the entire team”
says Portnetic CEO, Conor Slattery
Engagement between Portnetic and BoatyardX
The BoatyardX team provided product, design and technical capabilities, which combined with the Portnetic SME expertise allowed for a paced delivery.
The engagement was kicked off with a series of discovery workshops that allowed the team to understand the E2E process and the desired scope for the platform.
The key areas focused on were:
• The business process
• The customer experience
• Adding value for customer and staff users.
Following the discovery phase, the solution design was finalised. The architecture and planning phases of the project were subsequently completed, with a fully integrated agile delivery approach adopted. In parallel to delivery, several user testing sessions were conducted with Portnetic customers, to obtain feedback on the platform.
Following go-live of the platform, BoatyardX has maintained a support and run service level agreement, completing the full lifecycle.
The Result
To date, the Portnetic platform is live, and will soon be deployed to multiple garages and dealers in Ireland – with these organisations expected to achieve significant efficiencies and cost savings by using the platform, when compared with the Importation of UK used cars without the use of Portnetic. In addition, given the centralised document repository capability of the platform, garages and dealers are assured that they are audit compliant, including tax, customs and excise duty requirements.
- Product architecting and planning
- Full-stack development
- UI/UX design
- Reference Cloud
- Architecture deployment
- Data engineering / data science
- DevOps
- Lifecycle management
- Business & technology strategy support
- Architecture: BoatyardX reference architecture
- Frontend: Native JavaScript, Vue.js
- Backend: Java
- DevOps: AWS, Kubernetes
- CI/CD: Jenkins, Gitlab
- UI/UX design: Figma