Crane Worldwide opens new Heathrow office and reveals new customer portal

Freight forwarder Crane Worldwide Logistics is set to reveal a new customer IT portal following on from the opening of its latest office and warehouse at London Heathrow.
The US-headquartered company, which began its UK and Ireland operations in 2009, yesterday held an opening ceremony to celebrate the opening of its new 3,150 sq m facility in Heathrow that will offer increased warehouse space, e-commerce support, pick and pack operations and labelling.
“Having outgrown our current premises, the new facility at Heathrow enables us to build upon our existing capabilities and allows the team to provide further value added services to our portfolio,” said Crane Worldwide Logistics country manager UK and Ireland Jason Stretton.
Stretton said the company’s growth, which comes in difficult market conditions, is down to investment in its sales team and a focus on specific vertical markets including, aerospace, automotive, retail and energy.
With regards to the expansion of its sales team, Gerard Ryan regional vice president Europe, Middle East and Africa said the UK business had just hired five sales people and a sales director and was also looking to recruit in the Midlands and the London market.
It has also formed close partnerships with Middle Eastern carriers in order to secure freighter capacity and worked closely with customers to create bespoke solutions while being able to offer a global network.
The company was also continuing to expand globally and has also just opened an office in Vietnam and is considering opening a facility in Saudi Arabia.
As well as its investment in people and new offices, the company is also looking to roll out a new IT system.
“Over the last 18 months we have invested significantly in our new technology products and they are really going to be a game changer not just for ourselves but also for our customers,” Stretton said.
President and chief executive John Magee added: “I am confident that in 2017 we will have technology that our industry doesn’t even think about and we are not done yet, that is just the progress we have made over the last 18 months.”
A new purchase order (PO) management system is due to be released over the next quarter.
Stretton said the PO system will provide visibility down to the part number, offer landed cost analysis and vendor management.
And by the end of the year the company will also release a new customer dashboard portal, currently in a testing phase, that will allow users to drill into the details of each dashboard.
The portal can be used on mobile devices as well as desktop computers and offers track and trace, exception reporting, on-time performance and spend management dashboards.