Over the last decade, selling online has become more important. The Internet has offered huge growth opportunities, but also made it more challenging to manage inventory. And when the inventory is not being updated for all channels at once, both overselling and underselling can easily occur. In order to prevent this, Floral Computer Systems developed a computer software system that manages the inventory at all times across all sales channels and called it SMARTSystem. At present, they service three major areas of the floral industry supply chain: growers, importers, wholesalers, and some bouquet operations throughout the US and Canada.
The team of Ever-Bloom with John Henderson of Floral Computer Systems in the middle. Ever-Bloom grows gerberas and owns the largest gerbera assortment in the US. They have been SMARTSystem users since January 2015.
When it all started
Over 10 years ago, John Henderson, President of Floral Computer Systems, noticed that the rise of the online sales made managing the inventory a challenge, particularly for wholesales. "The sales rep in-store sells a product that looks like it's still in stock, but has already been sold online, or vice versa. As a result, they were overselling or underselling their products"
Do something about it
So, with the mission in mind of giving business owners and managers the tools to better manage and control their operations resulting in economic growth and expansion, Henderson decided to do something about it. He developed SMARTSystem; it does allow for the management of inventory at all times across all sales channels. "We developed websites whose databases are fully integrated with the SMARTSystem, providing real-time inventory tracking for both in-store and online sales."
This video shows the common challenges of running an in-store ("brick") and online ("click") business, plus how to solve them using SMARTSystem.
Acceptance industry
The industry quickly showed that they were pleased with this new product as the software system won the “Best New Product” award at the 2007 Phoenix Expo and the “Best New Product of the Year” award at the 2008 WF&FSA Expo in Tampa.
Customize
Over the years, they keep up with times and kept developing the software to assist all channels in the supply chain. "We are very willing to work with our customers to get the system customized for them, to train them on it, and to basically help them develop new business plans that make the most of the system. So we often work with people who are "old-school," or perhaps don't consider themselves to be too "technical" but see the power of automated management and the Internet and want to harness it."
Recently, for example, Floral Computer Systems streamlined and consolidated customer order invoicing using barcoding and made a program for automatic sequencing of delivery routes for drivers (Click here for more details).
For more information
Floral Computer Systems
John Henderson, President
2850 Swan Circle
Dunedin, Florida 34698
Office: 727-483-7451
Fax: 727-736-4215
E-mail: Marketing@floralcomputer.com
www.floralcomputer.com