Stream Surfer
~$68,000 saved annually
Lee Bennett, CTO at the time — a technically skilled peer who chose to bring in outside help anyway, unifying disconnected billing, support, and connectivity systems for RV owners and Sea Ray Yacht customers. Engagement ran 2015–2022; Stream Surfer is no longer an active client following Lee's departure from the company.
The Problem
Stream Surfer's business meant staying connected in places connectivity is hardest to find, on the water. Their core offer combined data plan reselling for RV owners with hardware installations, routers built into Sea Ray Yachts running the iCommander app, giving customers both entertainment and connectivity in one system, backed by partnerships with Verizon, AT&T, and T-Mobile for the actual data plans.
Running underneath all of it was Zoho, handling most of the business, but the individual modules weren't built to talk to each other. Billing lived in one place, support tickets in another, and the two rarely reconciled cleanly, creating real manual work reconstructing what a customer's account actually looked like. Task management ran through Asana, but loosely, disconnected from the systems tracking the actual customer relationship. None of this was broken exactly, Lee and his team were technically sharp enough to keep it running, but "keeping it running manually" and "running efficiently" are two different things, and the gap between them was quietly costing real time every week.
The Solution
We didn't rip out Stream Surfer's existing tools and start over, Zoho was already the right foundation, it just wasn't wired together properly. Working alongside Lee, we combined and automated the individual Zoho modules so billing, support, and customer records finally operated as one connected system instead of separate silos.
Zoho Books came into the picture to handle the financial side properly, connected directly to the same customer data everything else was already using. Asana's task management was brought into the same ecosystem, so work assigned to the team traced back to the actual customer and account it belonged to, instead of living in its own disconnected list. The connective tissue holding all of this together was built through Zapier for cross-platform automation and Deluge scripting, Zoho's own scripting language, for the more specific, custom logic Zapier alone couldn't handle.
The result was a single, coherent system built entirely on tools Stream Surfer already owned and already trusted, no new platform to learn, just the existing pieces finally working as one.
The Tech Stack
One System, Built From What Was Already There
Unified Customer Records
Zoho Modules
Connected)Billing, support, and account data now live as one connected picture, instead of separate modules that never talked to each other.
Proper Financial Tracking
Zoho Books
Brought the financial side into the same ecosystem as everything else, connected directly to real customer data, not a separate system.
Connected Task Management
Asana (Integrated)
Work assigned to the team now traces back to the actual customer and account it belongs to, instead of living in its own disconnected list.
Cross Platform Automation
Zapier
Handled the automation connecting Zoho's modules to the rest of the system, moving data where it needed to go without manual entry.
Custom Business Logic
Deluge Scripting
For logic too specific for standard automation, custom scripts built directly inside Zoho handled the exact rules Stream Surfer's business needed.
Connectivity Hardware Integration
iCommander + Carrier Partnerships
Routers built into Sea Ray Yachts, running the iCommander app, backed by data plan partnerships with Verizon, AT&T, and T-Mobile.
The Results
Built to the standards of a publically traded company
~$68,000
Saved annually in reconciliation and manual work eliminated
7 years
A real, ongoing partnership, 2015 to 2022
Zero new platforms
Every improvement built on tools Stream Surfer already used