It's a 24-hour a day, seven days a week responsibility, life is about to get tougher and Ms Josephine Eviston hasn't even hit the six-month mark yet in her new job as chief operating officer of Irish Express Cargo (IEC).

Last September, Dublin freight firm IEC was acquired by US electronics group Flextronics International in a deal reportedly worth about £60 million (€76 million) and Ms Eviston was appointed as chief operating officer.

Following the acquisition, Ms Eviston has found a cultural change in moving from a privately owned Irish organisation to being part of a multinational organisation, as the people at the top and the infrastructure have also changed. Managing the cultural change is ongoing for Ms Eviston. The acquisition means that IEC has added another global dimension.

Life is about to get busier, but Ms Eviston hopes that the infrastructure she is creating will assist her and everybody in the company to grow the business much more rapidly. New business is to be expected. "The new business we have coming at us these days as part of Flextronics is of much higher value than previously as IEC in its own right," she says. Previously a £2 million contract was a large contract. These days contracts can be between £5 million and £10 million.

"IEC has changed its position in the marketplace. When we talk about the marketplace we look on Ireland and the UK as being slightly different from the rest of world from an IEC viewpoint. This is because we have built up an infrastructure in Ireland and the UK, but as we move abroad we will never create that infrastructure again. But we leverage off our expertise here in Ireland to manage third-party providers in other locations."

It is a competitive environment and some people would look on IEC as a freight forwarder, others see it as a logistics company, and some look at it as a fulfilment company. In all of those areas it has different competitors. In the Ireland/UK market its competitors are its partners in other locations.

"Through our acquisition by Flextronics we have changed our position slightly in the marketplace from being just solely a service provider to being slightly between the manufacturing or the contract manufacturers or the service providers. So we've slotted in the middle there."

Ms Eviston joined the company in 1987 to set up the IT department. At the time, it was a strategic decision to bring in and utilise technology as a means of differentiating the marketplace, she explains. The company was then a transport company - an air, sea and road freight forwarding company. "Technology was one of the key things. That's when I came on board and we started developing our own freight forwarding applications at that time, which was basically to manage the business, and create, track and trace information flow. It's all about information - where your products are, when they arrived there, who signed for them, if there were delays, why there were delays," she says.

In the early 1990s, an opportunity arose to do inventory management for a client, starting the whole process of moving into logistics, which Ms Eviston describes as "warehousing, inventory management and the supply chain management and fulfilment".

"We started evolving the systems to include inventory controls, inventory management, scanning in the warehouses, barcode scanning, and track and traceability. Basically, the system at that stage evolved through a combination of IT people and the business people in the company deciding this is where we are at, this is where we want to go to, rather than standing back and saying we're going to do a six-month development plan." Some of the technology, she says, has been developed client-specific, some internally through the company's view of the marketplace.

Originally from Loughmore, Co Tipperary, Ms Eviston went to school in the Ursuline College in Thurles. Before joining IEC, Ms Eviston studied computer applications in the College of Commerce in Rathmines and worked with software development company Memory, working with it and another company for a few years in Britain. Staying with IEC long-term was not part of the plan and Ms Eviston admits that she knew nothing about the freight business at the time.

"Dirty trucking company, I thought there is not going to be work for me after two to three years when I have an infrastructure set up. But that was most untrue. "I got married within a couple of months of joining IEC and I aimed to stay in IEC for a three-to four-year period to set up an IT infrastructure. For me it was an opportunity to utilise my skills and set up an infrastructure within a business."

With her IT background, Ms Eviston has a good mix of skills. "As well as developing the IT systems, I would have been very involved in business development roles and in general management of the company in a previous role." She began as IT manager and became IT director in 1997. In the past 13 years, the IT department has expanded to 43 staff.

Ms Eviston had some share options in IEC, but her gains from the sale, she says, depends on the share price on different days of the week. "I had share options in a privately held company which, to a large extent, had very little value. They now transferred into share options with Flextronics, which now have a marketable value."

The main beneficiary of last September's sale was Finn O'Sullivan, who is a majority shareholder. Another shareholder, Mr Gerry Tyrell, was also a beneficiary, as were several other small shareholders. Ms Eviston declined to give details of the sale.

She has been a woman in a senior position in a large organisation for the past 13 years. "From my own personal point of view, my life is consumed by work at this point in time, I would have to say. It's consumed by Flextronics, it's consumed by IEC. That is partially due to the changeover, it is partly due to the new businesses coming at us, it is partially due to my own position in the organisation as well. Effectively, I'm on call 24 hours, seven days a week. My mobile phone is always on. I'm always on e-mail."

Because she has a young family - four children between the ages of nine and three - and an equally busy husband, she finds she has to keep a balance there as well. "I keep that balance by working at home when they are gone to bed at night time. It is a combination of finding the best to suit both environments. It is tough. It is difficult and it is very time consuming."

Hobbies and spare time are all family orientated. Swimming, walking and weekends away with her family are how she relaxes from the long work days. Weekends are not totally free. Ms Eviston works till midday on a Saturday and will read through her many e-mails on a Sunday night to prepare her for the following work week.

Because of the time difference, Ms Eviston can be engaged in late night conference calls with US and European colleagues. "You've got to do a lot of scheduling of your time - managing your time effectively so that you can cut off when you have to cut off and be available when you need to be available."

In addition, she travels to Europe once a week. Despite the pressure, she enjoys the work and would not have stayed with the company for 13 years otherwise, she insists. Moving into the role has been a huge challenge and Ms Eviston reports directly to San Jose-based Michael Marx, Flextronics Worldwide chief executive, because strategically IEC offers a global service.

"Flextronics' aim for IEC is that they sell IEC as part of their end-to-end service for the customers." IEC's aim is that Flextronics is not its customer but that Flextronics customers are IEC's customers.

IEC does not want to be inwardly focused within Flextronics, says Ms Eviston.