Florensis: this top breeder & propagator is now growing digitally too.
Imagine you’re a flourishing B2B company and your main marketing instruments are some yearly events and paper catalogues with 4,000 products in it. Now bring your marketing, sales & service online. That’s a big challenge! This story is about that challenge.
Florensis?
Florensis is a family business that provides professional growers with young plants, about an inch high. The growers grow these young plants into full grown plants, which they sell to you and me through garden centers and other retail stores. Make no mistake, this is real business:
- € 90 million turnover by making young plants from seeds and cuttings, and cut flowers.
- 250 employees in Europe, 2,000 world wide, and even more during the season. Production locations are based in The Netherlands, Portugal, Kenya and Ethiopia.
- Did you know most of those colourful balcony plants in Germany and Austria are made by Florensis? And they hold the patent for that specific flower.
When we met…
The request was to make a website, and more important: an ordering tool for clients. We launched the first version of the website in June 2015 and some months later the first version of the ordering tool. In this first phase, it was only intended to be used by Florensis’ own Sales Representatives, so we could optimise the interaction based on their feedback.
“We want an ordering tool.”
Our clear soft launch strategy worked very well. First, we set a hard baseline. Then we gave co-workers time to get used to the new client-focused systems and we built upon that. Of course, this is a standard Lean practice. But doing it with so many internal stakeholders at Florensis and in a client-agency relationship can be quite challenging.
What we’ve made so far:
- A client focused strategy & roadmap for eCommerce to start with a clear direction.
- A modern responsive website with all 4,000 products and a basic order form to order direct available young plants and cut flowers.
- A comprehensive ordering tool for Sales Reps so they can submit & confirm orders while sitting with the client, even on a tablet.
- An Amazon Web Services hosted Digital Asset Management tool (DAM) to store high resolution images that are used on the website and the ability to bulk share these with clients.
- A service environment for clients where they can plan and order all Florensis products and track their orders. The environment is connected with the industries’ standard back office system PAT and is continuously improved.
- An online and offline rebrand, including a new logo, logo variations for sub-brands and online and offline style elements.
Collaboration
From the start we had an intense collaboration, we invested a lot of time on both sides to manage expectations, being open to each other and not shying away of telling each other what’s wrong and how we can improve. But to be honest: at the end of the first phase we had a classic challenge regarding scope & investments. But overcoming this improved our trust in each other resulting in a fundamental partnership.
The right process
This project once again proved that Agile Scrum is the right way to continuously build a business. It’s also the only way to get results in the most cost-effective manner, faster than your competitors. We worked in Scrum from day one. I really admire Florensis for their trust and flexibility, considering this way of working is totally different from what they’re used to.
Still, now and then, when they feel out of control or feel they should get more for their money they tend to tighten the “old skool management screws”. It’s typical for my clients in this phase, and I think it’s my job to explain to them how Agile management works, and exercise control that way. Luckily, Florensis management is really open and we can discuss things like this, and that is where success starts.
The right skills
Back to bringing 4,000 products online. If you’re doing that, you have to:
- Make a website or app with a a logical structure to navigate and bring this to potential clients.
- Make SEO friendly texts, that are modern, snappy and activating: 4,000 times 3 texts per product.
- Make images that are fit for a client to make a decision based on an image of a flower on his screen. Again minmum 4,000 images.
- Design, build & manage systems to store product related texts & images.
- Bring these products under attention of potential clients via mailings, Google Ads, campaigns, etcetera.
Besides hard work, this demands certain skills. Skills that Florensis employees are developing. And Florensis sees that they might have to get new people in with different skills to help them with this. In the short term, freelance marketeers or we as an agency can help them out, but I really think that these skills should be internalised in a modern organisation.
This can be an extra challenge, because in The Netherlands people with digital skills are in high demand, and Florensis is competing for people in a tight labour market against companies with a higher hipness factor.
Oh yes, images…
In our designs we always use stunning images of Florensis’ flowers. Florensis gave us feedback that we should use less beautiful images as they don’t always have stunning images of their stunning flowers and it’s a lot of work to get these. This is still a friendly battle. We want to challenge Florensis to create more high quality content, instead of settling for what is available. We see these flower images not only as their product, but as their marketing too.
Different discussions
Until now we had clear building blocks: the website, the DAM, the Order Form. But now we are working towards one single Customer Experience exercised via multiple media. Before, discussions were about functionalities and design. Even with senior management. This should change now. I think the most important topics should be about:
- Business results: is the service for clients improving? How are they experiencing our online services? Can we improve online sales in current and new markets? Is the organic traffic to the site improving?
- What do we learn from our (potential) clients? We base this on client feedback and data we gather from the site & shop. Does website traffic suggest interest from new markets?
- Can we improve operations based on data? For example: can we predict future sales based on click behaviour in the online shop and start up seed production early on?
- Process & organisation: what skills do we need? Who should be in the eCommerce SteerCo? How do we organise marketing, sales & service? And how do we do that in one department?
Lately one of the Florensis’ employees was huffing and puffing because it was so challenging to get the organisation ready for digital. I said I was really happy that we now have this sort of discussions during management meetings, instead of discussing what color the website menu should be.
Vision & Future
Currently we are updating the strategy and roadmap as it is 1,5 years old and we need to refine the focus. Also we’re adjusting some programme structures and processes to keep everything workable as we continuously sprint with at least one release per month.
Florensis’ ambitions are high, but realistic. I really believe in Florensis and hope we will continue to build their business together and make a difference in the industry even more.
In all my years as IT Manager I’ve never seen a partner like TamTam.
One last thing: the people. People at TamTam really like to work for Florensis, and Florensis is really faithful to us, despite an incidental f#ck up or misunderstanding on either side. Everyone at both sides of the partnership is willing to take that extra step, to go for that mutual success. So thank you all!
Why this story?
When I suggested some online marketing ideas the Sales Director said: “First have the basics right and then we will shout that we’re good.” But I reckoned they wouldn’t do that any time soon. It’s not in Dutch nature, and certainly not in their industries’ nature, so I said: “Things are never finished, just tell your stories.” Well, now I’ve told one story;)
I am the Strategist & Product Owner at the TamTam side and involved from the start of the programme. Reach me at jeroen@tamtam.nl
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