Archive for the ‘News’ Category

In its 23rd year the highly coveted BIFA annual awards ceremony was attended by over 400 freight forwarders, hosted by accomplished media personality, broadcaster and author, Christine Hamilton.

Christopher Hewlett, Managing Director of BoxTop Technologies Ltd, long time sponsors and supporters of BIFA, was pleased to present the Supply Chain Management category award to a delighted Philip Brown, representing SBS Worldwide.

In it’s submission SBS Worldwide described how, jointly with its consultancy, it revolutionised the consolidation of printing for a medical publishing client of theirs. The newly-created supply chain now allows the publisher to consolidate the printing of millions of books per year in Asia, whilst having massively reduced the logistics costs in year one of operation.

SBS Worldwide is the deserved winner of this category for illustrating an excellent example of a true vendor relationship. Their tailored real-time web solution not only provided end-to end-visibility, via multiple media, but also incorporated their customer’s key performance indicators, in addition to demonstrating tangible benefits in cost, transit time and flexibility.

ActionCOACH Yorkshire and the North East business Awards 2011 were held at Harewood House, near Leeds recently, where over 30 successful businesses competed for one of six prestigious awards for their achievements.

Judged by David Streather of Lloyds TSB, Keith Madeley (known as Mr. Yorkshire), together with Jonathan Jones of Squire, Sanders and Dempsey (UK) LLP, the six award categories were bestowed on companies that have embraced the coaching process and as a result were able to demonstrate outstanding business performance. These categories included Marketing, Innovation, Entrepreneur, Team, Financial and Business of the Year. “This year the judges have had a tough choice as so many companies have shown incredible success in so many different ways” stated Keith Madeley.

The most sought after award on the night ‘Business of the Year Award 2011′, was won by GXD Logistics from Goole. Managing Director Graham Cross was delighted to have been honoured for the successes achieved in his business over the last 12 months and said “The award came out of the blue but once I’d had time to think about it I could see how it amounted to recognition of what the whole team has achieved at GXD.” The business offers an unrivalled freight forwarding service, their expertise and experience enables them to transport cargo safely and efficiently by air, sea or road. Their success, despite the current economic climate, has enabled them to substantially increase turnover, generating raised net profit returns. Graham has been coached by ActionCOACH Mandy Hildred of York over the last two years, Graham has said “The effect of Mandy’s coaching is that I am working more efficiently and so is the business, with systems that measure on a daily basis where we are and where we want to go”.

Paul Richardson, BoxTop’s Business Development Manager says “We’re always delighted to hear success stories, but especially when it involves one of our customers! On behalf of everyone at BoxTop I’d like to congratulate Graham Cross and the whole team at GXD Logistics on winning this prestigious award.”

Multimodal 2011 – was visited by over 4,000 shippers, freight forwarders, manufacturers, retailers, wholesalers, distributors, importers and exporters.

Multimodal 2011 is the UK and Ireland’s largest and most transport and logistics exhibition. The event is huge. Hall 4 at the NEC is 16,700m2 – almost 2.5 the size the times of Wembley!

This year – the event welcomes BoxTop Technologies Ltd for the first time – a leading freight management software suppliers in the UK.

As well as almost 200 exhibitions stands, Multimodal featured a whole array of seminars, workshops, trade briefings, networking occasions and features. All free-of-charge to visitors – and visiting was free too!

With ample car parking, fantastic train connections and Birmingham International Airport on-site – the NEC is the perfect location to host this prestigious event.

According to Multimodal, this exhibition provides visitors with hard-to-get information, a “shop-window” of top service providers, unrivalled networking opportunities and great peer-to-peer contact.

Commenting on the success of the exhibition, Paul Richardson – BoxTop’s Business Development Manager says “This was the first time we’ve exhibited at Multimodal and it’s been a resounding success. Not only did we get a chance to say hello to some of our existing customers but we were also delighted with the number and quality of prospects that visited our stand. We’ve already decided that we’ll be back in 2012 with a bigger and better stand!”

The BIFA Supply Chain Management category is open to companies who have provided a customer-focused innovative solution enabling a more efficient and cost-effective management of the supply chain.

Damco were the deserved winner of this category as they demonstrated clear and tangible benefits for their customers with the introduction of a service of innovative systems aimed to help improve the quality of information within the supply chain.

The award was presented by Paul Richardson, Business Development Manager, BoxTop Technologies Ltd to Anatoliy Nagornyy of Damco UK

In the first ever Sunday Times, ‘International Track 100′ BoxTop customers appear in the league table of privately owned firms with the fastest growing international sales.

International Track 100 is compiled by Fast Track, the Oxford company that researches Britain’s top-performing private companies and provides a useful analysis, of the available figures, on growth in overseas trade by British private companies.

Horizon International Cargo, a BoxTop customer for many years, is ranked 39th with growth of nearly 80% a year between 2007 and 2009. Since the company started its operations in 1991 as a small air freight business at London’s Heathrow airport, it has grown substantially and now employs 90 staff in 11 offices worldwide to handle the demand from customers for its air, sea and logistics services. Horizon has opened five overseas offices in the past two years.

B & H Worldwide, in 89th place, provides supply-chain management and logistics services to the aerospace and publishing industries and have been using BoxTop since 1997. BoxTop is currently used by B & H in their offices in the UK, USA, Asia and Australia.

Smaller forwarders want much improved visibility, says BoxTop.

Freight forwarders are seeking greater visibility. “Just being able to track cargo is no longer good enough,” says Christopher Hewlett, managing director and co-founder of BoxTop Technologies.

“Visibility is much more useful if it is used pro-actively for planning and preventing problems, not just for finding out who is to blame when things go wrong,” he explains. “It should not be used simply as a historical record.”

Hewlett believes that BoxTop were ahead of the game when it first started providing this functionality and its freight management software system has included high levels of visibility for many years. However, many of the small and medium-sized forwarders are only now seeking to use all the functionality.

“With the recent economic climate, the smaller forwarders are facing two issues – intrusion into their traditional area of business by the bigger forwarders and logistics companies, and demands for greater reliability and cost control from their existing customers,” says Hewlett.

In addition to offering their customers greater visibility, BoxTop users are also able to widen their service portfolio by adding inventory management services, on-line stock control and pick & pack fulfillment services. “This allows them to compete with much larger forwarders – the exporters and importers can have the best of both worlds, intelligent use of information and personal service,” explains Hewlett.

BoxTop Technologies mentioned in article in launch issue of Freight Business Journal, April 2010. “Information is the name of the game in the freight industry of today. – Full Screen View by Marcia MacLeod.”

“Forwarders need software that allows open access to data – but also lets them add their own updates,” says Christopher Hewlett, Managing Director at BoxTop.

“Capturing data is not that easy; there is a shift to web portals to allow the right information to be seen long before the goods become a shipment. This way forwarders, shippers and consignees can identify problems before they occur – allowing decisions to be made to adjust the delivery process – for example, change the mode of transport; reduce the size of the order; source materials elsewhere; or transfer stock from another location. The need for early visibility becomes even more important when shelf-ready goods are involved, as no stock literally means empty shelves! We’ve spent 18 months working on software to support this enhanced visibility.”

Freight management software company BoxTop Technologies has launched BoxTrax, a state-of- the-art system that allows freight forwarders to offer their customers all the information they might ever need.

“This is much more than a standard freight tracking service,” says Christopher Hewlett, managing director and co-founder of BoxTop Technologies. “It allows forwarders to publish any document or give access to any information that their customers might want to see.

“Most of the BoxTop team have freight and logistics backgrounds so we understand what forwarders’ customers are looking for to make their lives easier. BoxTrax starts with on-line booking by customers and allows all aspects of the service until final delivery and invoicing to be seamlessly followed through the system.”

As well as providing standard real-time visibility, BoxTrax has a powerful search engine which lets forwarders’ customers search for specific consignments from a comprehensive array of options including their own references.

“We recognise that there is no point having all the information available unless customers are able to access it in a way that makes sense to them,” says Christopher Hewlett.

BoxTop continues to design and develop its services in close co-operation with its customers and is focussing on its warehouse features, including inventory stock management, in anticipation of future demand.

“We never just launch a product and say ‘here it is, take it or leave it’,” explains Christopher Hewlett. “Our customers, the smaller and medium sized forwarders, often win business on their ability to be more flexible and more responsive than the largest logistics providers who force customers to fit into their own systems. We help our customers tailor their services to exactly meet their own customers’ needs.”

The BoxTrax system also provides the unique BoxTrax Stats page, allowing forwarders to access statistics, showing them who exactly who is viewing what, when and how often. “This helps them understand their own business processes – and, equally importantly, gives them a greater understanding of how their customer works.”

BoxTop Technologies is a leading provider of freight forwarding software. The company was founded in 1995 by Christopher Hewlett and Bill White and since its revolutionary, Windows-based forwarding software was launched in 1997 the solution has been continuously enhanced as forwarders – and their customers – demand greater levels of visibility, reliability and efficiency.

BoxTop prides itself on its personal approach. “Our customers talk directly to the technical support guys to discuss any issues. Together we identify the need for new features or improvements to existing ones – and we develop and implement workable, robust freight software solutions. BoxTrax is just the latest example of that process,” says Christopher Hewlett.

On Thursday 21st January 2010 Christopher Hewlett, managing director of BoxTop Technologies, presented the BIFA Supply Chain Management Award for 2009 to Allport. The BIFA Freight Service Awards ceremony is held annually at The Brewery in central London, and recognise excellence within the freight forwarding industry. Allport were the deserved winner amongst a very high level of submissions for this year’s award. They demonstrated a highly detailed understanding of the supply chain process and the underlying business that it supports. This enabled their client to streamline their operation for greater efficiency whilst achieving substantial reductions in operating costs. The other finalists were NYK Group Europe, Pantos Logistics (UK) Limited and Seawing Landguard International Ltd.

“I’m absolutely delighted with the launch of our new website,” announces Christopher Hewlett, co-founder and director of BoxTop Technologies.  “It was time for a change. Our existing website, although popular, had remained fairly constant for a few years and we all thought that it was time to showcase some of our achievements. I hope you enjoy it but if you have any suggestions for further improvement please let us know.”