Ferrio

Daniel Blaney and his business partner Alex Humphreys first came up with the concept for Ferrio in late 2020, and began working on it full time in September 2021.

Ferrio help businesses of any size and tech capability level connect their software applications and data. Businesses can reduce risk by keeping data up to date across their applications, get insights and monitor their business by reporting on data from all their sources, and save time by automating digital processes. All this can either be done with hands on help from Ferrio, or within the Ferrio application in just a few clicks, making it especially useful for smaller businesses that may not have the time or resources to invest in building integrations themselves. It enables businesses to get the most out of the data and apps they already use, easily add and change apps to their workstreams, and access powerful reporting and dashboarding tools that they might otherwise struggle to feed with dataDan and Alex were introduced to Morgan via Sheffield Tech Parks in October 2021, when they had been working full-time on their product for about a month. Since then, they’ve met with him every two to four weeks as they developed every aspect of their business.

“This is the first time either of us has set up a new business,” said Daniel, “so there are a lot of unknowns. Morgan’s helped us to understand and tackle what we didn’t know. For instance, around the same time we get in touch with our first investor, Morgan worked with us on cashflow forecasting – we found day-to-day finance fairly intuitive but found it really helpful to have some guidance getting to grips with the longer-term stuff.” 

‘In particular,’ said Daniel, ‘Morgan helped us get to market much quicker by encouraging us to make hands on help and consulting part of our offering. Our original plan meant we’d have to commit a huge amount of time to developing the product and the list of apps we could connect to before we could get to market. Morgan advised us to work more closely with our early customers, rather than positioning ourselves as just an app, so we could build our integrations on a case by case basis. He was also able to introduce us to businesses in the area who were able to feed back on our offering, where it might be useful for them, and what kind of applications were widest used in their industries so we could prioritise our roadmap.’

By the end of this year, Dan and Alex want to automate the sales process as much as possible and make the product self sign-up. Right now they’re working very closely with their customers and will continue to do this for customers that want it, but many users just want to get started themselves. This level of growth should put them in a position to make some hires, which they’re keen to do to return the support the local area has given them.

They plan to continue working with Morgan throughout this process. ‘He’s proved invaluable in the advice he can give us,’ said Dan, ‘So far he’s had an answer for everything we’ve come up against, and if he doesn’t know something he can signpost us to somewhere we can find a solution. It’s great to know there’s someone we can book in an hour with and come out with answers to all our questions.’