The World at Your Fingertips

24 hours a day.  They are always switched on, plugged in and available.  It’s just what you want if you’ve trusted someone to get your product to the other side of the world. 

You need that relationship.  You need to know where your cargo is, where it’s going and when it will get there.  It’s your money, your business, your reputation. 

Mary McMahon and David Burke understand the freight business inside out.  Add Mary’s 20 years’ experience to David’s eight, both performing in management roles, and you can see a pattern of hard work and mutual respect come to the fore.  When the two of them met while working for another Dublin freight forwarding firm, they recognised an opportunity to do things our own way and decided to start up their business, Freight Wise Ltd., in 2007 with a new more customer-focused approach to the market.

Meeting them in their Dublin office and warehouse facility, you can tell there they are obviously not afraid of putting in the hours to get the job done right.   And they have found a balance where they can both fulfil their particular areas of expertise - operations for Mary, sales and marketing for David - while still knowing the business well enough to cover for one another - it‘s a great partnership.

“What makes us different is the relationship we form with our clients and suppliers,” says David.  “We both knew we could improve on the kind of freight forwarding services out there.  We wanted to offer 24-hour access to our customers sending goods, and to the suppliers we use to move them.  We knew dealing with call centres could be a frustrating for any business that wanted to know exactly what was going on with their cargo.  With us they’re either dealing with myself or Mary.  We are the account managers so our clients are getting their information straight from the top.  It’s much better for them, and it means our relationship with clients and suppliers grows from strength to strength.”

The partners are both armed with iPhones says Mary.  “We have our offices phones diverted to us whenever we need to, and we can get all our emails directly to the iPhones.”   It’s just one aspect of how much they have utilised the latest technology for their business, and an example of how they have learnt to plug the little gaps in their knowledge with good advice  from the experts.

“We’re firm believers in outsourcing areas like IT,” says David.  “There’s no point in us trying to cover every angle when someone can give us great advice on how technology can improve our operation.  We have a guy on retainer who looks after a lot of that for us.  We could go off and learn about it but we feel it would take away from our core business and what we’re good at.

“In fairness to Mary she does most of our bookkeeping in-house, but we have a good accountant, which is one of the tips I would give to anyone starting a business.  It makes no sense to work hard and not employ a good accountant.  You have to have a clear and accurate picture of your business, and no nasty surprises.”

Freight Wise, and their clients, have benefited enormously from David and Mary’s ability to negotiate favourable terms with agents around the world.  “We were confident we could provide a more cost-efficient service, and we would be able to keep our customers happy,” says David.  They took a strategic decision not to cold-call for business in the early years, instead honing their networking skills and investing in a number of membership organisations to that end.

One of the most beneficial has been the Multinational Forwarders Alliance (MFA), which has over 250 vetted members who provide a sense of security, guarantee, motivation, trust and reliability as a group.  “It’s great for recommendations,” says Mary. “We linked up with an agent in Canada and they have been fantastic to work with.  And say if you take China, we were dealing with an agent there but we couldn’t get credit terms – it can be a difficult market like that – so we were paying for our Chinese freight up front and we can’t ask our customers to do that, so that was hurting our cash flow.  Our bank manager has been great and we have an overdraft to cover those kind of costs, but we try not to dip into it.  But through the MFA, we’ve now switched to a different agent and we’re getting 30 days from end of month credit and great rates, which helps us in keeping our costs down.”

David also tapped into Dublin City Enterprise Board’s LINK! Network, and just last month won a DCEB award for the ‘Newcomer with the Best Business Plan’. “Winning the award gave us the recognition that lets us know that we are doing something right,” says David.  “It has also encouraged us to revisit and update our business plan.  The LINK! Network has been invaluable to us.  We have expanded our own network, gained clients, and we also get some great advice from like-minded owner managers.  The monthly meetings are very beneficial and the topics and speakers have been very relevant to start-up companies.”

Freight Wise has clear plans for how the business can expand.  There are new clients lined up for the New Year to add to the 40 plus who already enjoy, appreciate and profit from David and Mary’s astute sense of what a great freight service should be.

© 2008 Dublin City Enterprise Board. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced in whole or part without the permission from the D.C.E.B.

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