Nautical Mapper - Custom Cruise Maps Production Software

The Cruise Maps are a UK based business that produce customised cruise maps for their customers allowing them to relive their cruise through creating a personalised souvenir of their cruise trip. The company uses real shipping data to plot the specific path that a customer’s voyage has taken and then print-on-demand facilities to print and distribute the physical copies worldwide. The business sells thousands of custom cruise maps per month and needed a system to manage the data and distribution of their cruise maps. They sought out Tech Relays to design and scale an integrated map management system to grow their business.

Using a combination of their own maritime experience, pre-built integration tooling and a handful of freelancers, The Cruise Maps team had managed to stitch together a rudimentary set of tools that in combination could be used to produce custom maps using Shipping Data for their customers. The combination of tools with limited interoperability and integration however meant that that the production was manual, highly time-consuming and error prone limiting their ability to scale up their production operations to keep up with the growing demand for their product. Issues in the underlying data were also difficult to identify and correct meaning team members in the organisation were only able to produce on average of 15-20 custom maps per day. In addition to the scaling challenge, the team wanted to produce ever greater variants and co-branded maps with partner shipping companies which was adding greater complexity and running into the limitations of the existing system and tools.

To ensure the Cruise Maps team could reach their goal of an integrated map production system, Tech Relays drew from agile mechanisms and started with a collaboration workshop to understand the goals, the business challenges and the maritime domain. From this workshop, Tech Relays then partnered with the Cruise Maps team to further elicit requirements and collaborate on some low-fidelity sketches of the integrated system. The team discussed and agreed key elements of the integrations and how the data would flow between the different systems starting out with the Shopify eCommerce System, the Shipping Data supplier and ending up with the Print on Demand Company. With these agreed, Tech Relays started working on a base application with an agreed feature set. Each week, Tech Relays would demonstrate the latest changes, iterate and improve based on the priorities and needs of the Cruise Maps.

A key challenge through the work was ensuring that the mapping teams could quickly customise the appearance of the maps without requiring significant development time from Tech Relays. To solve this challenge, Tech Relays came up with the idea of using map style configuration files that the mapping team could select when producing the maps. These files were easy to edit and allowed the mappers to control everything from the port call colours to the co-branding for special edition maps. This solution has facilitated the wide proliferation of styles and co-branded maps that you can see today on the Cruise Maps website.

With the delivery of the Nautical Mapper production system, the Cruise Maps were able to increase the amount of maps that they were able to produce with their existing team members by 140% whilst reducing printing and data errors by 20%. Whilst improving output and quality, the high level of configurability of the system has also allowed the cruise maps to offer a range of styles, orientations and co-branded maps for partnering cruise lines. "Tech Relays work hard to ensure you get what you want, but also advise you on industry best practices and cost saving opportunities all while providing a high level of customer service and application support". - The Cruise Maps

The collaboration between Tech Relays and The Cruise Maps resulted in a transformative leap in efficiency, scalability, and flexibility for the business. By replacing a fragmented, manual workflow with a streamlined, integrated system, The Cruise Maps team can now produce more maps, reduce errors, and offer a wider range of customisable products without increasing operational strain. The success of this project highlights Tech Relays’ ability to combine deep technical expertise with a client-focused, iterative approach—delivering solutions that not only solve immediate challenges but also empower long-term growth.