The transport and logistics sector faces growing demands for quicker, more efficient services as global supply chains expand. As businesses and economies globally become more interconnected, the volume of goods that need transportation grows, leading to increasingly complex routing, scheduling and delivery requirements.
For this week’s Behind the Idea, we chat to Lyall Cresswell, CEO and founder of TEG, a fintech-enabled platform that aims to streamline sourcing, optimise operations and accelerate payments in transport and logistics.
Here, Lyall shares insights into the development and role of TEG in the logistics industry.
Tell us more about your company and its offering
TEG is a fintech-enabled platform serving transport and logistics. It simplifies transport sourcing, optimises operations and accelerates payments – all in one place. Our platform combines a thriving marketplace of 8,500 transport and logistics businesses with a suite of enterprise-grade solutions. These handle everything from carrier sourcing and compliance, to real-time data insights and payments.
We’re particularly proud of our SmartPay system, launched in 2024. It makes life easier for logistics providers by radically simplifying invoice reconciliation, approval and payments, saving them time and resources.
What problem was your company set up to solve?
When we launched in 2000, we saw that B2B marketplaces in transport had huge potential due to the fragmented market, but most were failing due to lack of liquidity. Our focus then was on optimising the use of unused capacity on courier vans and trucks. We launched with a minimal viable product in just four months.
What’s interesting is that while many tech companies today focus on raising funds and indeed often see that as a measure of success, we took a different approach. We were bootstrapped and focused on building a subscription business from day one.
After a trial period lasting just four months, businesses were willing to pay a monthly subscription fee because they saw immediate value in what we offered and were happy to support our efforts to improve the industry we set out to serve
Since launch, how has your company evolved?
Over the past 25 years, we’ve evolved from a freight exchange into a fully featured fintech-enabled super platform. The real paradigm shift came when we built an integrated settlement and finance capability. These were the missing pieces that enabled us to offer an end-to-end solution.
We’ve expanded beyond matching carriers with jobs to providing enterprise-grade solutions. These include compliance frameworks, freight audit tools, and data analytics, and are trusted by the likes of Dascher, Kinaxia, Howard Tenens and TVS among many others.
We’ve always been incredibly focused on innovation and spend 25 per cent of revenue on product each year. We built features like ‘signature on glass’ back in 2004 before mobile apps were even a thing. Now, as we celebrate our 25th anniversary, we’ve also launched our latest enterprise-level solutions. They digitalise transport, end-to-end, helping third party logistics firms tackle pressing challenges like carrier sourcing, compliance, real-time visibility and sustainability reporting.
It’s all part of our vision to be the only end-to-end platform helping logistics providers deliver their customers’ most ambitious supply chain goals.
What has been the biggest challenge or most ‘tricky moment’ to overcome?
Our biggest challenge was probably re-platforming in 2013 when we moved from the first generation of our platform to a completely new version. It wasn’t just about changing the tech stack but about taking both our team and customers with us on that journey.
Today we face a different challenge: helping the market understand our evolution and the breadth of solutions we provide. We are also incredibly aware of the need to keep abreast of new technology such as AI and bring that to our platform in a way that helps our clients and stakeholders throughout the ecosystem.
What are your biggest achievements or ‘proudest moment’ so far?
I’m particularly proud of how we’ve innovated consistently while staying true to our original mission. We’ve grown our people, the business and the businesses within our network. We now have a team of 200 colleagues and have launched apprenticeships to nurture new talent.
What really stands out is how we’ve transformed payment processes in logistics with SmartPay. Its features make payments much more straightforward for logistics firms. For example, our automated invoicing can slash admin time by up to 90 per cent, and our non-recourse guaranteed early finance options eliminate financial risk. The levels of transparency that we are bringing to the table are revolutionary in an industry that traditionally struggles with payment delays.
How would you describe the culture of your company?
We’re built on authenticity, honesty, and transparency. These aren’t just words on a wall. They’re fundamental to how we operate. We believe in doing the right thing. We lead from the front, and as we’ve grown more sophisticated and expanded our capabilities, we’ve maintained these core values.
What’s in store for the future?
We’re working on some truly transformative initiatives. We are planning to invest in AI to streamline processes and provide actionable insights. We’re also focusing on expanding our enterprise footprint to help even more logistics providers scale flexibly, reduce operational costs, and build more resilience.
Our vision remains clear: to make TEG a fundamental part of the logistics landscape. So we’re focused on making what we do readily understood, easily consumable, and a necessary part of any business infrastructure in transport and logistics.
