C3 Railmaster: Transforming a Frustrating Legacy Tool into a Reliable Asset

The Problem

A core operational tool had become a daily bottleneck.

C3’s Railmaster system is at the heart of their port inventory management. However, years of technical debt had turned it into a source of constant friction for the teams on the ground:

• Performance Drag: Slow and buggy software was increasing the margin for error and frustrating staff during time-critical tasks.
• Maintenance Gridlock: The code had become so “messy” and outdated that making even small improvements was high-risk and slow.
• Workflow Failures: A business-critical feature, ‘Send to Jade’, was frequently failing. This created duplicate data entries and forced staff into hours of manual cleanup.
• User Friction: An outdated, unintuitive interface meant longer training times and a higher likelihood of data entry mistakes.

For a business where timing is everything, these weren’t just “IT issues”—they were operational risks that slowed down the entire supply chain.

The Solution

A ground-up rebuild focused on the user experience.

We partnered with C3 to transform Railmaster from a liability into a high-performance tool. Our “no-nonsense” rebuild focused on what mattered most:

• Engineered for Reliability: We rewrote the application from scratch using modern architecture. The result is a system that is fast, stable, and—importantly—easy to maintain.
• Fixing the Core ‘Pain Points’: We re-engineered the ‘Send to Jade’ integration to ensure 100% accuracy, eliminating the duplicate data issues that had plagued the team for years.
• Intuitive Interface Design: We overhauled the UI/UX, creating a clean, modern interface that port staff actually enjoy using.
• Knowledge Transfer: We didn’t just hand over a black box. We mentored the internal team, ensuring they have the confidence and skills to manage the new system moving forward.
• Zero-Disruption Delivery: We managed the transition efficiently, ensuring the rebuild happened without interrupting daily port operations.

Our goal was simple: take a frustrating legacy system and turn it into a tool that makes the job easier, not harder.

The Results

Smooth operations and a future-proof foundation.

The impact on C3’s daily port operations was immediate:

• Operational Speed: Tasks that were previously slow and error-prone are now handled with speed and confidence.
• Data Integrity: The ‘Send to Jade’ feature is now bulletproof, saving staff hours of manual data reconciliation every week.
• Reduced Technical Debt: By replacing “messy” code with a modern foundation, we’ve significantly lowered the long-term cost of ownership.
• Scalable Growth: Railmaster is now a modern platform ready to evolve as C3’s operations grow and change.

By focusing on practical improvements that matter to the people using the software, we turned a legacy headache into a modern success story—exactly the kind of simple, effective software we build for Kiwi businesses.