Business blooming for online flower retailer

Managing director of Nottingham-based Bunches.co.uk, one of the UK’s largest independent online flower retailers, has accelerated her company’s turnover to more than

£5 million with assistance from Vistage International, the world’s leading chief executives’ organisation.

Dani Hoving took over the family firm, founded by her parents Erik and Sandra, in 2006. Since then, the 28-year-old has powered the business to 35 staff and record profits. Bunches has doubled the size of its production facilities and now dispatches 320,000 bouquets a year from its Newstead Village headquarters.

Hoving joined Vistage International with a view to improving her leadership skills and using her fellow members, who are all from non-competing sectors, as a confidential sounding board. Vistage, which has 15,000 members globally, brings together groups of business leaders who meet for intensive and challenging monthly development sessions, where they act as one another’s non-executive directors.

After taking fellow members’ advice, Hoving has succeeded in increasing the company’s competitive advantage during the current economic turbulence, by emphasising the quality of her company’s products and service. At a time when household budgets have been tightened, Bunches’ lowest-priced offering - a boxed bunch of carnations for £9.99 - is being heavily promoted and has helped to boost the company’s online conversion rate.

Hoving has also relaunched the company’s website, overhauled the company’s five-year plan, and introduced a staff reward system that has improved recruitment and retention rates.

She said: “These days even supermarkets deliver flowers, so it’s more important than ever that we play to our strengths here at Bunches. Our flowers are all packaged and dispatched from one unique location - unlike services such as Interflora - so our staff are able to maintain high levels of quality control. We don’t outsource at all: we are passionate about quality and excellent service, and all our flowers receive the Bunches stamp before they are sent out in Bunches-branded boxes.

“This is a family-run business and in response to customer feedback we are working hard to maintain our company’s friendly ‘feel’.

“I am delighted that despite these difficult economic times, Bunches continues to go from strength to strength, and I am grateful for my fellow Vistage members, who have held my feet to the fire over the past two years. The results have been positive and far-reaching - and I haven’t looked back.”

Vistage chair John Williams, who facilitates the monthly meetings and conducts one-to-one sessions with members, said: “In a volatile business environment, the market can shrink and become elusive - not to mention fiercely competitive. To outsmart other companies in your sector, you must learn what it is that customers value about doing business with you and your rivals.

“Today’s chief executives and managing directors, like Dani, are required to be more sophisticated and capable, demonstrating higher levels of business acumen while seeking to attract, retain and motivate the best people.

“Vistage develops business leaders who are seeking to outperform, make better decisions and achieve better results. In the current economic climate, the advantages of Vistage membership are more evident than ever,” added Williams.

RETALIX INTEGRATES

Morrisons plans to deploy a new point-of-sale system to increase operational efficiency and enhance the shopping experience across its 378 stores and 285 fuel stations.

The grocer will use an integrated system of software applications from Retalix that includes its StoreLine point-of-sale (POS), quick-service-restaurant (QSR), and self-checkout applications for the stores. In addition, Morrisons will use Retalix software to automate its back-office cash management process.

Gary Barr, IT director at Morrisons, said: “Morrisons requires proven, world-class retail systems to achieve our business requirements for profitable growth today and in the future.

“The Retalix system provides scalability and flexibility to support stores of varying sizes with different selling formats. The new store system from Retalix will help us deliver an enhanced shopping experience to the 10 million customers that walk through our doors each week.”

LINKFRESH BONANZA

It provider Anglia Business Solutions has won an Enterprise Vertical Market Solution of the Year award for its deployment of LINKFresh at Produce World.

The accolade was announced at the 2008 UK Channel Network Awards in London on October 16.

The enterprise vertical market category was for major IT solutions integrated into the client’s line of business which show a real understanding of the needs of the client and of the industry segment. The judges were looking for innovative solutions that enabled the organisation to be more productive, efficient or effective in their particular market segment.

The winning solution deployed for Produce World, initially within its British & Brazilian subsidiary and now being rolled out across the group, combines financial management and a paperless packhouse production facility with a range of other innovative business applications.

Speaking after collecting the award, Anglia’s managing director, David Hurley, said: “The Anglia Business Solutions entry this year was pitched at the highest level in the enterprise space. Here, we were competing against major solutions involving significant budgets at national level. It is therefore gratifying just to be shortlisted in such elevated company and to win the award was a magnificent achievement. The winning solution was the result of a superb partnership between the Anglia and Produce World deployment teams. The delivered system… has rightfully been described as setting new standards for the use of IT within the fresh produce industry.”

It is the third year running the Dynamics NAV based LINKFresh solution has triumphed.

Produce World finance director Ian Batkin said: “We are delighted that our LINKFresh solution has gained well-deserved national recognition by winning this highly prestigious award. The Anglia and Produce World teams have successfully collaborated to deliver a system that will provide us with an excellent productivity aid using dynamic information.

A GROWING RETURN ON THE CARDS THANKS TO ANGLIA WEB PORTAL

Richard Jones, .NET development director at Anglia Business Solutions, outlines the benefits of the firm’s grower’s return web portal - an IT solution making the grower return process more efficient and helping boost supplier loyalty.

One of the key concerns in today’s competitive fresh produce environment is reliable security of supply. This is particularly relevant when dealing with overseas suppliers. In the global economy, the shift in economic power has meant that selling into the UK market, large though it may be, may not always suit the interests of overseas growers. Other options are becoming available to them as the wealth in other countries increases.

Securing the loyalty of important suppliers is therefore increasingly essential. Here, providing growers with accurate and timely product and financial information can play a major role. After all, in these challenging economic times where cash and credit are increasingly rare commodities, they also have businesses to run. They need to know as soon as possible how much they will get paid for their product and when. In addition, if there are quality issues with their product, the sooner they know, the quicker they can act on the information.

The traditional way of dealing with this thorny issue is using a variety of systems to capture the data. The ubiquitous spreadsheet is the most common, where various people provide the information from disparate sources. This is then manually collated with various reworks taking place before the results are finally released to the supplier. Apart from the sheer administrative senior management effort involved, there is the inevitable delay where the suppliers are left in the dark on the details of their returns. In the long term, this is not a sustainable situation from either the grower’s or distributor’s viewpoint. However, it does represent an ideal opportunity for information technology to play a vital part.

First, let us not underestimate the complexity of the task of managing an efficient grower’s return process. The labour to produce a return for even the simplest of grower returns is significant. To produce a return manually can take up to a day a week. In packing operations that deal with multiple growers and supplying multiple supermarkets, the time to produce each return increases exponentially. The sheer volume of paperwork can eat up administration time to the point of changing the focus of the packing operation from a production operation to that of an administrative organisation.

This clearly lends itself perfectly to an automated process. Capturing quality information on the shop floor about the processes for packing and handling products as they arrive from the grower and continue to the supermarket is vital to being able to achieve accurate grower return information. By using integrated handheld and touch screen applications, information at each stage of production operations is recorded that can all be traced back to the grower supplying the original product.

With a first-rate mechanism of capturing ‘what goes on’, it becomes a much easier task for automating the production of the final returns.

As a result, what used to take an inordinate amount of time can now be completely automated. Once a packhouse agrees commercial terms for which rates should be applied for each type of handling operation, this information can be captured once in the core business management system.

A specialist fresh produce application can be configured to cope with numerous scenarios. In a business where prices fluctuate daily, costs change for packing, labelling and any re-work that takes place. In addition, rates can be set for both product and downstream supplier. For example, carrots supplied to Sainsbury’s may have a very different cost profile to an organic carrot supplied to Marks & Spencer. Once the system is configured to handle this, it becomes comparatively easy to manage.

While this system manages the capturing and analysis of the grower’s returns, the next priority is to rapidly share the information with the grower. Once the return is approved, the data is uploaded to a web portal. Not only does the system provide the return information, it can also share the quality control data on which the return is based.

The web system can also perform other useful tasks once live. It can provide access to the grower’s account information, which will enable him to sanction payments. It can also be used to periodically input expected harvest yield information. This can make the task of forecasting against expected demand easier for the distributor.

In summary, the topic of automating the grower’s return process has been fragmented for some time. The reality is that it is difficult to do if you are working with a disparate range of systems.

However, working with modern business management solutions that capture all of the product information as it moves through the supply chain makes the task that much easier. The results can mean creating improved loyalty within the grower community, thus helping to secure future supplies. It can also provide a useful aid to forecasting what can help reduce waste and improve profitability.

A RANDOM CHOICE

AEW Delford Systems has launched a Random Labelling System for simultaneous multiple product handling on a single packing line.

Suitable for use with all AEW Delford weigh price labelling systems, the Random Labelling System enables a large number of different packs to be presented for labelling at any time. The system can handle up to 500 comformats, depending on the size of the memory card.

The Random Labelling System can use a number of pack identification methods, including barcoding the trays, interfacing with an order entry system or via the operator control panel. With a barcode system, the trays, which are pre-labelled or printed with a barcode that indicates an individual product specification, pass through a barcode reader on the infeed conveyor.

Once each tray is identified, the product and tray specification is fed to the weigh price labelling unit, which will immediately adjust for the tray size, height and label position - and apply the correct label with the fixed and variable data. This is achieved by using the ‘chaotic’ mode, multi-comformat and look-up features in the weigh price labeller’s purpose-designed software.

All information about activity on the line is also automatically supplied to a central database for detailed production records and data analysis. The weight price labelling system can also be networked with other equipment in the line.

The maximum number of different product specifications that can be accommodated on each line is determined by the number of different label designs required.

The Random Labelling System is ideal for customers running a large number of different product specifications with frequent changeovers. By using such a system, operators can increase production throughput and efficiency - and reduce downtime.