How long does it take to get started?
Most customers are live within one week. The onboarding process has three steps: first, we connect Tidal directly to your existing email inbox — whether that's Outlook or Gmail — so incoming RFQs are captured automatically from day one. Second, we map your product catalogue to IMPA and ISSA codes, which takes 2-3 days depending on catalogue size. Third, we configure your margin rules, client-specific pricing tiers, and any vendor relationships. No IT team is required, no infrastructure changes, and no ERP integration is needed to go live. ShipNet and Bassnet integrations are available but optional. Most chandlers process their first automated quote within 48 hours of kickoff. The week-one timeline is based on actual deployment data across all Tidal customers to date.
What if an RFQ has items we don't stock?
Tidal flags unmatched items and routes them to your team for manual pricing. In practice, 90%+ of line items are matched automatically on the first pass — even from messy or inconsistent RFQ formats where vessel operators use non-standard descriptions or item names. When an item cannot be matched with confidence, it appears in a flagged queue inside the Tidal dashboard. Your team prices it manually, and that correction feeds back into the system immediately. Over time, match rates improve as the catalog grows richer with historical pricing data. For most chandlers, within 30 days of go-live, the residual manual queue shrinks to under 5% of total line items. Tidal handles RFQs with 800+ line items — a volume that would take a human team hours to process manually.
Do you integrate with our existing systems?
Yes. Tidal integrates with the two most widely used maritime ERP and inventory management systems: ShipNet and Bassnet. Integration is available via API or CSV export, depending on what your current setup supports. For chandlers on other platforms, we can discuss specific connectivity options during onboarding. That said, Tidal is designed to work as a completely standalone tool — no ERP connection is required to go live and start processing RFQs automatically. The standalone version connects to your email inbox, uses your uploaded product catalogue, applies your configured margin rules, and generates complete quotes end-to-end without any external system. Many of our customers went live in standalone mode first and added ERP integration later, once they had seen the time savings and decided to invest further.
Is our quote data secure?
Yes. Security is built into every layer of the Tidal platform. All data is encrypted in transit using TLS 1.2+ and encrypted at rest in our PostgreSQL database. Your pricing data, product catalogue, vendor relationships, and customer quote history are never shared with third parties and are not used to train any models. The AI components — built on Claude (Anthropic) and Mistral AI — process your data within isolated inference pipelines per account. We do not use one customer's data to improve results for another. SOC 2 Type II compliance is currently in progress; we expect certification in Q3 2026. If your operation has specific data residency requirements — for instance, EU-only hosting — please raise this during onboarding as we can discuss options.
Do you work without an ERP?
Yes, completely. Tidal's standalone mode requires nothing beyond two things: access to your email inbox (Outlook or Gmail) and your product catalogue in any standard format. We configure the inbox connection, upload and map your catalogue to IMPA and ISSA codes, set your margin rules, and you are processing automated quotes within a week — no ERP, no API credentials, no internal IT involvement needed. This is deliberately how we designed the product, because most ship chandlers globally do not run a formal ERP system. If you do have ShipNet or Bassnet, Tidal integrates cleanly to pull live inventory and push confirmed orders. But ERP integration is an enhancement, not a prerequisite. The core value — inbox-to-quote in under 30 minutes — works identically in standalone mode.
What happens to RFQs that arrive at night or on weekends?
Tidal processes incoming RFQs automatically, around the clock — including nights, weekends, and public holidays. When an RFQ arrives at 2am from a vessel in Singapore, Tidal extracts every line item, matches IMPA and ISSA codes against your catalogue, applies your margin rules, and generates a complete, ready-to-send quote — all without anyone from your team being awake. Your team logs in the next morning to a dashboard showing completed quotes ready for a final review before sending. For ship chandlers competing on response time, this is often the decisive factor. The Singapore case study showed that cutting response time from 36 hours to under 3 hours — including overnight RFQs handled automatically — directly increased win rates. Vessel operators pick the chandler who responds first; Tidal ensures that is always you.
How accurate is the IMPA and ISSA code matching?
The IMPA and ISSA matching engine achieves 90%+ accuracy on the first pass, even from poorly formatted or inconsistent RFQ inputs. Vessel operators often send RFQs with non-standard item descriptions, generic names, or missing code references. Tidal's AI parses these and cross-references them against your product catalogue using both semantic matching and the formal IMPA/ISSA code libraries. For items that cannot be matched with high confidence — typically under 10% of line items in a mature installation — the system flags them and routes them to your team's manual pricing queue. Every correction made by your team is fed back into the system as a training signal, which means match rates improve continuously over the first 30-60 days of operation. Most customers see their manual queue drop below 5% within the first month.