My-Villages launches new DockMaster 8.0

My-Villages, a company that specializes in technology solutions for industry professionals and consumers, today announced that DockMaster, the leading suite of marine business software, has finished its beta period of its latest release, version 8.0, and is now available with a host of new and improved features.

DockMaster 8.0 automates all of a marine business’ activities – such as inventory, service and repair, billing, customer relationship management, boat sales, transient reservations and more – in one easy-to-use platform. As with previous releases of DockMaster the company offers a “hosted” solution that allows boat yards, marinas, service companies and other marine business to move their hardware, software and data out of their facilities and into the Cloud. With DockMaster’s cloud offering, companies do not have to purchase and maintain a local server, incur IT consultant expenses or perform regular data backups. The result is more reliable server uptime, higher security, fewer IT troubleshooting issues and more time to spend with customers. DockMaster 8.0 remains available for local installations as well, allowing customers to store their data onsite if they choose.

DockMaster 8.0’s four-month beta period involved installing 8.0 into multiple production environments and working closely with DockMaster users to gather feedback and implement those users’ specific requests for features and functionality. DockMaster 8.0’s new and improved features include:

• Easy-to-read graphical dashboards and improved overall navigation
• Enhanced calendaring capability
• Better spell-checking capabilities
• Enhanced print management features
• Improved integrated email communication capabilities
• Improved multi-tasking features, taking into consideration the multi-tasking and interruptions business users deal with in their daily work environments
• Better workflow management features, allowing users to define their workflows
• Seamless connectivity to off-site Cloud data storage
• The option to store data locally instead of in the Cloud

“Many industries have been doing business in the Cloud for years. It’s more secure, cost-effective and efficient, resulting in better customer service and ultimately improved profit margins. DockMaster 8.0 is also a very flexible solution, allowing customers a choice of a hosted service in the Cloud, or to install the application and store their data locally as well,” said Kevin Hutchinson, founder and CEO of My-Villages.

“We have been using the beta version of 8.0 in production since June,” said Tim Healy, CFO at Journey’s End Marina. “We have been excited to become a user of 8.0 since it was introduced at the OnBoard user’s conference in Florida last February, and remain enthusiastic about its capabilities.”

Started in 1983, and acquired by My-Villages late last year, DockMaster is the largest marine management business suite, now in use at more than 600 facilities in North America, the Caribbean, Central America and Western Europe. In this latest release, DockMaster has been moved to a completely new architecture (.net), improving performance, enhancing the user interface and enabling shorter development cycles with more frequent future releases.

With DockMaster, upgrades to local servers and software can take place remotely, eliminating business disruptions. At the same time, with the hosted offering, hardware failures are minimized because servers are housed in a secure facility where they are monitored and maintained around the clock by certified IT professionals.

My-Villages’ other application, The Boat Village, is also Cloud-based, and complements the capabilities of DockMaster by enabling online service coordination between marine businesses and customers. Later this year, DockMaster will be integrated with The Boat Village to extend DockMaster’s capabilities to coordinate service with customers online.  The result is an integrated system that can vastly improve communications and coordination, and enhance customer satisfaction and loyalty. To learn more about DockMaster and The Boat Village, please visit www.myvillages.com.