Give Every Yacht a Record That Survives a Name Change
20 July 2026Where AI Can Help a Yacht Broker and Where It Needs Checking
3 August 2026
The import finished and the contact count looks right. That is a start, but it does not prove the brokerage can continue working. An enquiry may have lost its yacht link. A note may be attached to the wrong person. An open follow-up may have no owner.
1. Describe the relationships before mapping columns
List what belongs to a contact and what belongs to an individual opportunity. Show how yachts, notes, documents and tasks connect. A spreadsheet export can flatten those distinctions, so the mapping should explain how they will be reconstructed.
Agree on duplicate handling with the team. Similar names are not enough to justify a merge. Keep an explicit route for uncertain matches and retain enough traceability to explain where imported records came from.
2. Choose a difficult sample
- A buyer with several yacht enquiries.
- A reassigned opportunity with an open action.
- A contact with similar details to another record.
- A withdrawn yacht that still has relevant history.
- A record containing optional or incomplete fields.
Use a suitably handled sample and have a broker review the result. They should be able to explain the relationship and the next action without searching the old system for missing context. Record discrepancies before scaling the import.
3. Plan the changeover
Decide when the old source stops receiving edits and how late-arriving enquiries are handled. The team needs one agreed procedure during the transition. Two systems receiving independent updates can create fresh inconsistencies while the migration is still being checked.
Keep a recovery plan appropriate to the project and verify that the source material can be restored or consulted if needed. Do not treat the first successful import as permission to discard the only working history.
4. Review the work, not only the totals
Reconcile the counts and inspect representative relationships. Ask staff to complete a normal follow-up in the new system. A migration has succeeded operationally when the team can continue the relevant work with understandable records.
Include this in the software brief. The migration scope should name who supplies the data, who reviews mappings and who signs off the working examples.