Increased Visibility | Time-Saving Benefits | Improved Communication | Accurate Invoicing | PODs Simplified | Keeping their Fleet Compliant | A Strong Partnership with Eureka | Collaborating With Eureka | Recommending Eureka | Looking To The Future
We sat down with Darragh Kehoe, Operations Manager, and Ken Byrne, Groupage Planner, to discuss how the Eureka MoveIT TMS continues to be an essential asset to them and their transport teams.
P&D Foley Transport, a well-established family-run company based in New Ross, County Wexford, has been a leader in frozen and chilled transport since 2000. With a fleet of over 65 vehicles and 150 refrigerated trailers, they specialise in transporting meat, fruit, and vegetables across Ireland, the UK, and mainland Europe.
With a focus on innovation and progression, they prioritise high-quality services, and as an example, they recently upgraded their fleet whilst expanding their operations. For over 15 years, Eureka MoveIT TMS has been an essential asset in optimising their operations.
As one of the Eureka Transport Management Software’s original and first customers, P&D Foley has been using the Eureka TMS, MoveIT, for over 15 years, and they haven’t looked back since.
“We did all our planning on spreadsheets and whiteboards”, says Darragh Kehoe. “Before, we didn’t have nearly the same level of visibility as we now do. Now thanks to MoveIT, we can track distances, anticipate maintenance needs, and plan ahead. It’s a game changer, a massive, massive help on the truck service side as well.”
“MoveIT allows me to double my workload in the same amount of time it used to take using Excel. It saves me about half a days work. The time-saving is unbelievable.”
After their move to the MoveIT TMS, Darragh and his team noticed immediate time-saving benefits. Darragh continues, “But it’s [MoveIT] genuinely been a brilliant addition. Before using MoveIT, we’d be here until half seven in the evening, trying to get everything sorted and planned for the next day. Now we are gone by five.”
Through their use of MoveIT, Darragh and his team are saving around 2.5 hours a day on admin time alone, as their former manually processes for creating, planning, and processing paperwork from past and future jobs were slowing them down.
On the Groupage side of the business, Ken Byrne, Groupage Transport Planner, echoes this sentiment, “MoveIT allows me to double my workload in the same amount of time it used to take using Excel. It saves me about half a days work. The time-saving is unbelievable.“
Previously, weekend planning for Monday deliveries was cumbersome, involving WhatsApp messages and manual address lookups. Now, through the MoveIT and Telegram integration, tasks that once took hours are completed in minutes.
“We used to be in the office until 6 PM on Saturdays. Now, we’re done by 2 PM, with improved accuracy.” Darragh shares.
“Now we have peace of mind knowing that the information that our drivers have is up-to-date, accurate, and saves me time from sending amendments.”
The team at P&D Foley wanted a system that could help their drivers out as much as possible, by providing them with the information they needed, as well as receiving updates directly from the drivers too.
Before MoveIT, drivers lacked direct access to key information. Now, with automated updates and GPS integration, they receive accurate job details instantly.
“The level of communication we get with the drivers is something that has helped us out massively. Before MoveIT [and the Telegram integration], drivers wouldn’t get anything sent to them.”
“Now, drivers get full addresses with GPS coordinates, reducing errors and speeding up deliveries. The days of relying on paper maps are over!”
Digitising their communication with drivers has not only streamline their communication across their operations, but it has also simplified the whole process for all of his team.
“Before I’d hand out a printed job sheet to drivers, it’d have the shipping references on, customer details, job numbers, all the job details. But, what if the job details changed, as they often do? Or someone else needed that printout but it wasn’t around? Not only this, but it took ages to make these forms, and they were for every job.”
“It was a massive hassle, but now we have peace of mind knowing that the information that our drivers have is up-to-date, accurate, and saves me time from sending amendments.”
Through the Telegram and MoveIT integration, Darragh and his planning team can easily share and update job details with their customers, quickly and easily, without the need to pick up the phone.
“Things change very quickly in our line of work, and especially with our customers.” Darragh explains, “Therefore, often job details need amending, or addresses need changing. The speed of communication the Telegram and MoveIT links give us is brilliant. With five clicks, the driver has an updated address. It’s as simple as that.”
Speeding Up Accurate Invoicing
Previously, planning and managing their operations manually was causing all sorts of issues, none more so than in the invoicing process. Anxiousness around the accuracy of the information, and general slow processes was a cause for concern.
Ken, who also works on the accountancy side of the business, explains how Eureka’s MoveIT and Sage integration helped to alleviate these worries, “Managing invoices in Excel was risky, and you’d have the fear of incorrectly invoicing someone, or not invoicing them at all. With MoveIT, everything is accurate and automated. The Sage integration is seamless, there’s never any downtime with that.” Ken explains.
The Eureka MoveIT transport management software allows for seamless integration across multiple accountancy platforms, including the likes of Sage, Xero, Quickbooks, and Big Red Cloud, helping to make the invoicing production and distribution as accurate, and pain-free as possible.
“That has completely been wiped from 100% to now 25% of our time. It has streamlined us from the start of a job, right to the finished invoice.”
Darragh recalls how challenging and time-consuming it was to process manual proof of delivery (POD) forms, and how simple MoveIT’s integration with the Telegram app has made it for his team.
“Before we got the Eureka systems in place, we would be printing two reams of paper a week, just on PODs. The pain of that much paperwork was nuts…”, Darragh continues, “We’d have folders full of paper documents.”
“The most time-consuming element for us before was getting jobs information to and from drivers.”
“That has completely been wiped from 100% to now 25% of our time. It has streamlined us from the start of a job, right to the finished invoice.”
“It’s brilliant. You go in, see your list of deliveries, click on it, and upload your POD. Very simple and straightforward, yet it’s proved essential for us.”
Not only are Darragh’s team feeling the gains of the Eureka MoveIT software, but their customers are also benefitting.
“Our customer service has been enhanced due to this POD handling through the MoveIT TMS and Telegram. If a customer rings in, we can get them their POD in seconds. There’s no waiting around, we get them what they need quickly, and easily. No hassle as the PODs are stored securely in Telegram ready for us.”
“It’s brilliant. You go in, see your list of deliveries, click on it, and upload your POD. Very simple and straightforward, yet it’s proved essential for us.”
While on-site with Darragh, the Eureka team had a look around their site, and discussed P&D Foley’s onsite garage and workshop, and how Eureka has helped them to keep their trucks compliant and roadworthy.
“Our guys in the workshop use Maintain IT, it’s really helpful to us, even though we know there is even more we can be doing with it!” Darragh adds, “It’s really simple to use. The guys outside use it to gather mileage (KMs) information from Orbcom, and it helps them to identify which trucks are nearing their maintenance timescales.”
Maintain IT, Eureka’s integrated garage software, provides users with a full maintenance history of each of their vehicles, whilst also creating detailed reports. Maintenance records and schedules, help operators like P&D Poley to remain VOSA and RSA compliant.
This can also be helped through the use of the Eureka Total Check driver app, providing drivers with a checklist to complete to monitor and feedback on vehicle conditions, with results being shared directly back to the office, allowing staff to plan swift actions if required.
“We use the Total Check app for the walkarounds, it’s really easy for the guys to use, and gives us the [fleet] information we need quickly.”
A Strong Partnership with Eureka
Having worked with Eureka for so long, Darragh recalls how his personal relationship has formed with the Eureka team, who are located just down the road in Rochestown.
“They’ve been very fair to us. We were one of Eureka’s first customers, way back 15 years ago, we have a great working relationship with the team there.”
“Mark first came into our office, he was brilliant like, he saw what we needed, and what he implemented was brilliant.”
“The guys in support, if we ever need them, they get back to us really quickly, there is never an issue with them. They are very dependable.”
Collaborating With Eureka On Software Development Projects
At Eureka, we like to view our customers as only software customers, but also long-term partners. P&D Foley and the team at Eureka worked on a solution to improve and streamline specific communication to specific drivers, and worked together to create a ‘Groups’ feature within the MoveIT TMS & Telegram integration.
This allows MoveIT operators to segment their communication, and only share specific messages or job details with specific groups of drivers, sparing them from choosing between sharing multiple messages to individuals or sharing irrelevant information with a large number of drivers.
“This helps us reduce mistakes and collaboration across our driver teams,” Darragh explains, “It helps to keep everyone in the teams accountable for the jobs they have been tasked to do, as well as allows the drivers to spot any mistakes made from the planning team. It keeps everyone right.”
Recommending Eureka To Other Irish Haulage Operators
“There is nothing else like Eureka MoveIT on the market. We’ve seen and been shown different systems over the years, but nothing comes close to MoveIT, especially in terms of adaptability for what we need. We couldn’t recommend it more highly. It has transformed our operations and will continue to be a key part of our growth.”
What the future holds for the team at Peter and Damien Foley Transport
We asked Darragh about his plans for the business over the next 12 to 24 months.
“As part of our business expansion, we are finalising the build for a new cold storage warehouse, 10,000sq feet (1000+ pallets storage).” Darragh explains, “With this, we look forward to continuing our conversations with the Eureka and Mandata teams, regarding systems that can help us with our manage those elements of the business in an efficient way too.”
With this warehouse expansion, Darragh and the team are looking to diversify their operations further, with the goal of becoming Groupage specialists in the very near future.
“We want to develop into more of a niche market with cross docking and chilled storage” Darragh explains. “This is something we already have a small bit of business with, but this is something we want to expand with.”
“We do some remote temperature controlled through our Thermo King integration with the fleet, this is something we’d like to see rolled out further across the fleet, again giving us more visibility and control directly through our MoveIT TMS, whilst putting less responsibility on the driver putting in that information.”
Darragh also discusses his optimism when looking ahead to continuing his work with the Eureka team.
“The way I would see the business going is that we will use MoveIT, the TMS, to do practically everything for our drivers, except drive the truck!”
“We hope to develop more in the future with MoveIT and the Eureka team, we have a great relationship. Our partnership with Eureka will continue to grow.”
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More about Peter and Damien Foley Transport here: |
| https://pdfoleytrans.com/ | |
| More about Eureka here: | |
| https://www.eureka.ie/ |
Eureka Contact:
 |
🗣️ Phil Newton |
| 🏢 Head of Sales & CSM (Eureka) | |
| 📞 M: +44 (0) 7791 074 636 | |
| ✉️ pnewton@mandata.co.uk |
Marketing Contact:
 |
🗣️ Jack Hall |
| 🏢 Marketing (Mandata & Eureka) | |
| 📞 M: 0191 250 2220 | |
| ✉️ jhall@mandata.co.uk |
Eureka is Ireland’s leading provider of transport management systems, with over 4,000 daily users of its software. The Co. Wexford-based company has been successfully developing TMS solutions for the transport and logistics industry for over 25 years.
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