Curtin Maritime Corp. is an American-owned and operated marine solutions company committed to innovation, efficiency, and integrity in every element of maritime operations. Founded in 1997, the company offers a wide array of maritime services, including marine transportation, marine construction, and dredging.
Performance through preparation
Based in sunny Long Beach, California, Curtin Maritime has become a leader in the maritime industry.
The innovative company serves the dredging community, marine construction industry, marine transportation, ocean towing, oil and gas industry, and vessel fabrication. Curtin Maritime maintains a fleet of towing vessels, deck barges, crane barges, dump scows, and assorted small marine craft.
“Curtin Maritime is a fully integrated maritime business and our focus is world-class mechanical dredging,” said Nick Sullivan, Director of Process Improvement at Curtin Maritime. “These are things that we construct and design ourselves and then we support all of the activities with our assets or our support vessels.”
Curtin Maritime provides a range of quality maritime services to clients worldwide, including the United States, Australia, and South America. In 2024, they started a $33.5 million project with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to update and dredge the Port of Baltimore harbor.
“The velocity at which this company is growing is extraordinary. We have so many different disciplines requiring things from capital construction to critical spares on the vessels to breakdowns and maintenance while we’re on the job,” Sullivan said.
The challenges
With multiple large-scale projects occurring simultaneously, the finance team at Curtin Maritime has a constant overarching challenge: controlling spend.
“Our operations are always moving really fast and there’s so many different people who need different types of products,” said Sullivan. “There is usually tons of last-minute purchasing.”
Sullivan, who leads the procurement and AP strategy at Curtin Maritime, admitted that several challenges arise for a company constantly expanding and trying to be efficient with a growing list of expenses.
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Unstructured approval workflows: With multiple expensive projects always on the go, procurement and AP teams needed a comprehensive digital audit trail for approvals and purchases.
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Reactive and rogue spend: To maintain business sustainability and plan for future expansion, Curtin Maritime wanted to implement a proactive spend culture, with strict budgets and processes to eliminate rogue spending, and real-time spend visibility to support growth.
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Change management: With an incredibly rapid growing employee base and hundreds of potential purchasers and approvers, Curtin Maritime needed to execute a seamless change management strategy.
On the AP side, it was difficult for Curtin Maritime to quantify money lost to AP errors and inefficiencies.
“We didn’t have a robust system to validate how much processing time was wasted or if duplicate bills we were paying,” said Sullivan.
With the company constantly scaling, Curtin Maritime was aware they had to significantly improve their spending, documentation, and internal control processes to manage their growth effectively.
“Prior to Procurify, there was no true workflow that was dependable and accessible to every person. There was no formal approval structure,” Sullivan said.
The solution
Innovation is embedded in Curtin Maritime’s DNA.
In the last 20 years, systematic innovation and an emphasis on versatile design have enabled continuous growth for the company, with more expansion always on the horizon.
The addition of Procurify’s procure-to-pay platform has supported Curtin Maritime’s culture of innovation and growth through:
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Streamlined workflows through AP automation: Procurify’s accounts payable module with automated three-way matching allows Curtin Maritime to accurately manage large volumes of invoices, significantly reducing time manually inputting data and verifying suppliers.
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AI invoice processing: Procurify streamlines invoice processing through automated AI-enhanced OCR technology, which extracts supplier and invoice data. Sullivan and the team appreciate that all line items are fully visible and easily tracked.
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Adoption and user experience: Procurify’s intuitive interface made the adoption process simple for the almost 300 Curtin Maritime employees tasked with procuring and approving purchases – oftentimes remotely from the Procurify mobile app.
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Efficient bulk ordering: Having the ability to use the PunchOuts feature for bulk ordering from suppliers has been an “incredible change” for the Curtin Maritime AP team, according to Sullivan.
Curtin Maritime will be leveraging Procurify’s AI and automation capabilities, aiming to experience a sharp decline in creating manual entries and making corrections, which had previously become a routine burden for the AP team.
“The beautiful part about Procurify is that it’s simple for users to access,” said Sullivan. “It’s a relatively curated experience. The AI toolset is giving our AP specialists more flexibility.”
In particular, automated three-way matching — and the accuracy it provides — is expected to be a game changer.
“The AP module is critical for us because it ensures that we’re processing bills properly,” said Sullivan. “Before, we did not have the practical approach to tracking our procure-to-pay workflows – now, it’s an area where we have much greater confidence.”
Takeaways
The Procurify end-to-end solution has supported Curtin Maritime during growth periods by providing control and visibility into spending and streamlining the purchasing process, bringing structure and proactive planning to its AP and procurement operations.
“Having a system in place that’s complementary to our vision and direction is critical to managing the complex operations of our industry,” said Sullivan.
