Financial management platform Voly Group recently announced its acquisition of leading crew management service Voyonic, now rebranded as Voly Crew Solutions. BOAT's Hannah Rankine sits down with Voly CEO Ian Flanagan to explore what this merger means for the superyacht industry.
Voly has long been a leader in superyacht financial services since it launched in 2016, offering the industry a user-friendly platform that manages all expenses associated with yacht ownership. Now, the Group is leveraging strategic acquisitions to expand this service, uniting market-leading products designed to simplify and streamline every facet of yacht management under one umbrella.
“Since we started Voly with financial management, it became apparent that there was a requirement for an overarching ERP solution,” Flanagan explains. “This means that anyone involved in managing a yacht – whether a crew member, yacht manager or family office – can sign in to a single platform and access everything they need to know about the superyacht on one dashboard with one password. Voly Group is here to enhance yacht management companies’ ability to report to owners in our space. To be clear, we don’t ever want to be in yacht management, our job is to give our clients every tool needed to enhance their own proposition to the owner."
Flanagan highlights that “refits and payroll are among the highest expenses in superyacht ownership”, motivating the Group to develop solutions that streamline these areas. “We aim to deliver the number one yacht management system and to achieve this, we believe in either buying the best in the industry or building them ourselves,” he adds.
The recent acquisition of project management service Pinpoint Works targets refit management by linking work lists to budgets with transparent, real-time reporting to enhance financial oversight. Now addressing this from a payroll perspective, Flanagan says: “We then discovered that around 30 per cent of a yacht’s expenses go towards payroll, which is often managed in a very antiquated way through spreadsheets. This led to frequent questions about how to modernise payroll processes - ultimately driving us to acquire Voyonic.”
Since its inception in 2007, Voyonic has provided a comprehensive suite of superyacht crew management services, from multi-jurisdiction payroll and health insurance to employee vetting and training. These have now been integrated into the newly named Voly Crew Solutions.
It was the Voyonic team’s knowledge and expertise that made a strong impression on Flanagan. “We wanted to buy the best people that had strong clients and longevity,” he notes. "After scouting key players, we found Voyonic to be the number one in terms of service quality. One standout reason we chose it was that its top four clients have been with them for around 15 years, and there is an average staff retention at Voyonic of 12 years or more, reflecting both exceptional service and a positive workplace culture."
Looking ahead, Voly Group has ambitious plans to transform Voly Crew Solutions from a traditional HR service into an all-encompassing Software as a Service (SaaS) crew management platform. "Voyonic's market-leading position and industry expertise provide a strong foundation for Voly Crew Solutions, allowing us to build advanced technology around a well-established structure," says Flanagan.
Like the Group's other products, Voly Crew Solutions is designed to be used on vessels of any size and is accessible to anyone who needs it. Whether it’s the crew logging hours and viewing documents or the management office handling payroll or organising training, the platform will handle all aspects of crew management. Existing Voyonic clients can rest assured that the quality of service they have come to expect will be maintained, with enhancements on the horizon to make it even better.
“Voly places great value on client feedback, recognising that they best understand the industry’s needs," Flanagan explains. "Currently in the research phase, Voly is building on Voyonic's ongoing service to over 6,000 crew members and anticipates launching phase one of Voly Crew Solutions in February or March 2025.”
To find out more information about Voly Crew Solutions or to book a demo, contact the team at Voly Group today.
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