Flamingo Flowers is part of the FLAMINGO HORTICULTURE GROUP in the United Kingdom; active in the cultivation, processing, marketing and distribution of sustainably produced flowers and premium vegetables.
IFS APPS implemented by Eqeep
Case Study Flamingo Flowers
The flower industry is dynamic and ever-changing, staying ahead of the game involves being faster than your competition and consistently delivering the highest quality goods. Any delay in the supply chain has an impact on the product’s quality, freshness, and ultimately, the bottom line.
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Case: What is the current situation?
The flower industry is dynamic and ever-changing, staying ahead of the game involves being faster than your competition and consistently delivering the highest quality goods. Any delay in the supply chain has an impact on the product’s quality, freshness and ultimately, the bottom line. By standardizing, automating and organising processes more efficiently, Flamingo Flowers and Eqeep have reduced logistics expenses while also eliminating unneccessary manual operations. Thanks to clever system integrations, the right information is also readily available within IFS, making export documentation quick and straightforward to compile.
The challenge
Each year, Flamingo Flowers enters into thousands of purchasing agreements with its growers. Much of this process was done by hand. From placing and confirming an order by mail or phone to receiving, verifying and processing the information within IFS.
“I quickly discovered that we were still doing everything by hand, rather than leveraging all of the available IT systems and connections that exist with the Dutch flower suppliers. This was also one of our toughest hurdles; connecting our business to the digital opportunities that are out there,” says Richard van Duijn, Finance Director at Flamingo Flowers.
“As part of our Digital Transformation efforts, we approached Eqeep in June 2019 to automate and digitize all of our manual operations in the Netherlands. In preparation for Brexit, we are working closely to automatically generate the necessary export documents in IFS.”
Results: what are the deliveries of the implementation?
Flamingo Flowers can now see directly in IFS what goods have been transported, in what packing unit, what quantities, what pricing, the origin, and other features; not only has this saved us a lot of time processing this information, but we can now be confident that we have the right information accessible in IFS.”
Starting July 2022, in addition to plant shipments, also flower shipments will be required to undergo physical inspections; this will incur costs, but it will also lengthen the lead time, as an inspector will have to visit first before a truck can take to the road.
As a result, the Goods-In team don’t have to fill out the receipt references because they are automatically generated from the delivery notifications. The only thing Goods-In personnel have to do is physically confirm that the goods match what is entered in IFS. After that, they will be able to close the booking process much faster and easier. The finance team also greatly benefits from this as well, as the receipt references are included on the invoices we receive. This is also the foundation for realizing automatic invoice processing. This is something we are now working on as well; keeping the invoices we receive digital.
Experience: looking back on working with Eqeep
Even though Flamingo Flowers lacked knowledge in several areas of the IFS system, Eqeep provided advice and assistance to ensure the project’s success. No matter what part of the IFS system, Eqeep always has the right people with the necessary skills and background to get the job done.” Even throughout this difficult time with Covid, Eqeep’s experts were always ready to engage with Flamingo Flowers and ensure that the projects were designed and executed properly.
Future: the future outlook
Flamingo Flowers still sees plenty of opportunities to further boost the ROI and profitability of the IFS system in the future.
Flamingo Flowers not only saves its employees precious time by reducing tedious and repetitive tasks, but it also boosts job satisfaction at the same time. Employees are now able to focus on more meaningful work.
