Businesses pivot to survive big challenges, says Cantec chief
Greg Tuohy, managing director, Cantec Group, who says the Covid-19 pandemic has accelerated an adoption of software into the core of his printing business that was already underway within the company. Picture: Darragh Kane
Irish businesses have shown great agility and reinvention to survive Covid, Brexit and other challenges, say the directors of Cantec Group.
With offices in Waterford and Cork, Cantec Group itself has evolved since its foundation as a printing services company in 1994 to now include three divisions: Cantec Managing Print Services; SmartOffice Technologies (software for digital transformation); and Cantec Design & Marketing (graphic design and web development).
Cantec merged with Cork-based SmartOffice Technologies last year. The group plans to double its workforce from 40 up to 80 staff by 2023.
Cantec recently launched an efficient customs clearance declarations solution, cutting the client's time of 20 minutes per declaration back to two minutes. It is soon to launch a new document management product, with a suite of other software solutions in the development stage.
At 11am on Monday, March 29, Cantec Group will be joined by the Minister for Foreign Affairs, Simon Coveney, for a free virtual event, outlining how Cantec’s customs clearance automation software will make a big difference for businesses in the post-Brexit era.
Titled ‘Power of the Pivot, Reinvent your Business’, and hosted by Munster and Ireland rugby legend Alan Quinlan, Cantec’s directors and a panel of business leaders will each describe their own transformational experiences.
“My career has been a series of pivots since the 1990s,” said Greg Tuohy, managing director of Cantec Group. “With the focus on sustainability, most businesses now aspire to have a paperless office and we're effectively helping them reduce their printing output.
“For the past five years, we could see that managed printing services would not sustain us into the future, so we set about diversifying into software. The pandemic has accelerated the process of working more smartly.
“Of course, print is still at the heart of our business. Advising clients on cutting their printing costs may have seemed counterintuitive, a bit like turkeys voting for Christmas. That's the pivot we made. People want to use more digital documents, less printing. We put a sustainable printing service into UCC, among others. We're giving cliets what they want.”
Two years ago, Greg tried to headhunt Paul Martin of SmartOffice Technologies. Instead, last year they agreed on a merger. The expanded Cantec Group is bringing its evolving service offering to its existing portfolio of more than 3,000 business clients.
“We're now bringing Paul's knowledge of automation and software to our longstanding customer base,” said Greg Tuohy. “Our new customs clearance automation software is a good example of how we've been able to pivot to deliver what the client needs.”
A major problem and current reality for Irish businesses as a result of Brexit is the increase in customs clearance declarations now required in order to export and import goods to and from the UK.
In January alone this year, 1.8 million customs clearance declarations were processed, versus 1.6 million declarations in the whole of 2020, according to Revenue. That number is expected to surpass 20 million declarations for 2021.
Cantec is helping clients automate several time-consuming steps in this process. Its new software product is enabling businesses and custom clearance agents to fully automate these processes, reducing the large amount of time investment currently required.
Paul Martin said: “All businesses are familiar with dealing with purchase invoices, VAT analysis, ledger coding etc. One of our core products at SmartOffice Technologies is software that automates all of those processes.
“When we were talking with custom clearance agents and looking at the new customs clearance procedures, we could see that there were a lot of similarities with what our software was already doing. It's similar technology dealing with similar information.”
A lot of Irish businesses were very well prepared for overseas trade post-Brexit. The CSO's figures show that imports of goods from Great Britain in January 2021 were €497 million, a fall of €906m versus January 2020. This implies a lot of Irish companies stockpiling in preparation for Brexit.
For any who previously only infrequently engaged with overseas trade issues, the customs clearance processes, however, have very quickly become a big challenge. Your engagement with Customs clearance processes now kicks in very early around UK trade, with customs duty and VAT applying for quite small purchases.
Customs duty now applies to goods from the UK with a value of more than €22. Customs duty applies to goods with an intrinsic value (the value of the goods alone excluding transport, insurance and handling charges) of more than €150.
Greg Tuohy said: “As a result of Brexit, businesses both big and small are now facing more border formalities and with the addition of increased customs clearance declarations. As forecasted, this has presented to be a major challenge for Irish businesses as forecasted. Our software system allows businesses to save up to 15 to 20 minutes per individual declaration.”
Minister for Foreign Affairs, Simon Coveney, added: “Here in Ireland and across Europe, businesses are adjusting to the changes and challenges brought by Brexit and it’s very positive to see businesses like Cantec Group, developing systems to address particular issues relating to these changes. Trading with the UK is a huge part of the Irish economy and it’s important that we can continue to streamline this as much as possible to ensure businesses can efficiently comply with these trade procedures.”
Visit to register to attend ‘Power of the Pivot, Reinvent your Business’ on Monday, March 29, from 11am to 12.30pm.
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