1 September 2003

EuroFlorist is a Swedish-based flower ordering service with 50 employees. They have subsidiaries in Germany, Denmark, Austria, Poland, the Netherlands, and Norway.

EuroFlorist had utilised Microsoft Business Solutions-Navision since November 2000. This installation had replaced an aging bookkeeping system and was completed on the recommendation of their venture capital partner.

EuroFlorist went looking for an order management solution that would exactly match how they did business. But according to Daniel Ekwall, systems manager, none of the order management solutions on the market fit the bill for EuroFlorist.

"We got quotations from different vendors; but all their solutions needed a lot of consulting and development work," says Ekwall. "We were being quoted ?250,000 when we could develop it in-house using the built-in development tools in Microsoft Navision software for ?50,000; and we already had an excellent experience using Microsoft Navision for bookkeeping."

solution EuroFlorist developed a perfect-fit automated ordering solution by customising the built in tools in Microsoft Navision. EuroFlorist is now able to invoice Web customers automatically, something that used to be a manual task.

Running the web invoicing in Microsoft Navision as a weekly batch job takes only ten minutes. Each country office saves a full-time employee and avoids a lot of mistakes. "In busy periods like Christmas, when we sell five times as many flowers, we don't need extra staff," says Ekwall. "With our Web business doubling every few months, the savings will only get bigger."

Every one of EuroFlorists 50 employees uses Microsoft Navision on a daily basis. The solution has been customised to meet the specific needs of the company. They have implemented shortcuts for every action. They have customised the screens so that only what is needed is shown and it is shown in exactly the right order. The entire solution is Microsoft Windows-based so it is familiar to employees and can be accessed via a mouse or a keyboard.

"They're small details, but they all add up, especially when every minute counts," says Ekwall. "We've reduced the number of ordering screens from six to two and cut order entry time by thirty to forty per cent."

Orders are transferred from the Web site to Microsoft Navision within one minute and the staff corrects any obvious errors. Next, jobs are allocated by choosing from a list of florists who can fulfil the order. The list takes vacations and hours of operation into account. It also prioritises shops that direct the most business through EuroFlorist. Finally, the staff confirms the order and it is automatically sent to the delivering florist by email or fax, depending on the florist's stated preference.

At the end of the month, EuroFlorist automatically sends a balance statement to each of the thousands of florists in its network. Statements list all the orders a florist has sent and received, plus the total amount payable or receivable.

"When you're entering up to 100,000 orders per month manually, there are bound to be mistakes," says Ekwall. "Now clearing personnel can quickly correct for orders that didn't arrive, were damaged or went missing, and credit the right people." At the operational level, everything seems to be running smoothly.

money savings EuroFlorist saved ?200,000 in consulting and development costs when they utilised their Microsoft Navision solution and developed the order management system on top of it. Despite growing order volume, EuroFlorist hasn't needed to add additional employees thanks to their automated ordering solution.

time savings Order entry has been reduced from six screens to two and order entry time has been reduced by 30 to 40 per cent since using Microsoft Navision for this purpose.

Invoicing Web orders was previously a full-time job for one person in each country; it now takes EuroFlorist only ten minutes to automatically invoice these orders each week. This solution also posts EuroFlorist's transactions and prints 1,000 balance statements in four hours. This is a 67 per cent reduction from the previous 12 hours with the old system.

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