How the right payment technology helped launch logistics at the peak of the pandemic

JBM Freight is a Manchester-based freight forwarder that opened its doors at the peak of the pandemic, in early 2020.

The founders Ben and Alice have a strong vision — to provide customers with great service and leverage technology to make it efficient. They aim one day to become the biggest non-asset freight-forwarder in the UK.

JBM launched a business at the start of a pandemic, but were also hit with the impacts of Brexit, price increases for sea freight and containers, driver shortages and currency volatility. It's been an enlightening journey, and they've had to learn quickly.

Expensive desktop-based software solutions, that their larger competitors can rely on, were out of reach for JBM when they started.

JBM's smart technology choices are what helped them deliver on their vision. They used a government grant to invest in a freight software solution initially and then turned to cloud-based software where they could — Xero for their accounting and HedgeFlows for payments.

Cloud-based software such as HedgeFlows and Xero integrate well and give the team the most up-to-date information across systems. Having it all integrated and easy to use has been transformative for their operations.

Saving time — The HedgeFlows technology is easy to read, transparent, and explains what it's going to do. Being able to pull invoices and pay them directly, with automatic reconciliation back to Xero, has removed manual challenges entirely.

Building relationships with customers — Alice is clear about how she spends the time that the team saves thanks to this technology — to meet and get to know more customers. Being more proactive, going out to see customers and asking them what they need.