Herald Sun, Tuesday, November 11, 2003: Women in Business by Olga Galacho
LOGISTICS solutions company Infoactiv was created to plug a hole in the transport sector so big that a truck could have driven through it.
Yet it took a woman in this male-dominated industry to recognise the missing link.
Helen Jarman established Infoactiv in 1999 to provide a seamless route for clients' products - from their source anywhere in the world to their destination. Today, the business has expanded to become a single interface for IT procurement, reporting and data management for a blue-chip list of clients that includes Cisco Systems, Hewlett Packard and Bell Potter Securities. "We get down to a very granular level with our clients' operations," says Ms Jarman, who recently won the Westpac business owner category of the 2003 Victorian Telstra Businesswomen's Awards.
Trained in economics and now studying a masters in information systems and management, Ms Jarman worked for several years at major insurance companies such as NRMA (now IAG) and GIO before landing
in the logistics industry with a major Domestic Airfreight operation.
Working on 250 transport company's accounts, she says she became frustrated by the limitations of the products and services she could provide.
Using feedback from the account holders, she was able to devise a holistic IT-based service that became the template for a business that now employs
over 16 people.
"I have made a huge investment in technology. You don't need to throw a heap of people at a problem when you have IT
solutions to support it," she says.
Ms Jarman describes Infoactiv as one point of contact for all logistics requirements, managing a diverse supply-chain environment and one data source for reporting that cuts clients' costs. But while the business met the needs of clients "who didn't want to manage
multiple supplier relationships" it was resisted by the transport industry initially.
"In this industry there is a negative attitude towards third parties," she says. "We were compared to a broker, which we are not, and considered to be in the way of direct contact between the trucking companies and their customers.
"We are trying to change old attitudes. We want the transport companies to see that we work equally hard for them and help them cut costs too."
While Ms Jarman says the refusal by some companies to deal with Infoactiv made here first year in business incredibly challenging, things have turned around.
For more information on Infoactiv’s products and services, please email info@infoactiv.com.au
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