Introduction
The company was originally founded by Chris Grace and Kathy Ross. Sadly Chris passed away in 2003. The collective group of companies has been trading for over 30 years. iCOS was originally named from the acronym “Integrated Cargo Operating System”.
In 2009, when contemplating the company’s direction, Kathy had an epiphany that inspired her to re-focus the company and create an “internet cargo operating solution” that was “LIVE”.
The company became known as ICOS LIVE.
And a new chapter began for the company. It has been organically grown and bootstrapped by Kathy and the Ross Investment Trust..
iCOS LIVE Evolution
While working with small-to-medium businesses in New Zealand and Australia, the company encountered a consistent situation within the transport industry.
Many businesses were family-based and had been operating for three or four generations, starting out with one truck and increasing to five, 10 or even 50 trucks but still had not implemented a freight management software package. And for those who did invest in server-based systems, they found the software to be a hindrance and not much help.
Why? The prime reasons were businesses either did not have the resources to put into the software or the purchased software was too complicated to install or to use.
Other common challenges these small-to-medium sized businesses faced:
- They were under resourced.
- They were buried under paper.
- They were time-poor and often cash-flow poor.
- They all had lost revenue and were not aware of this.
- They were busy working in the business instead of on the business.
- They had no transparency in their business and therefore no control of it.
It was then Kathy had the vision that could assist these businesses and their employees. She was certain the domestic transport sector could be transformed – by taking it from a paper-based world to a paperless environment – and set about creating a software solution that would revolutionise the industry.
So that’s what we did! We created iCOS LIVE.