In 2003, brothers Coen and Bart Janssen started their own nursery CoBaplant, located in Wateringen. They specialise in growing green houseplants and annual climbing plants. By remaining open to innovation and optimisation, the brothers want the nursery to grow and to keep up with the trend in digitalisation. We recently spoke with Coen about Floriday, digitalisation and his plans. Read more in the update!
CoBaplant cultivates the green houseplants Scindapsus, Philodendron and Schefflera and the annual climbing plants Thunbergia, Ipomoea and Cobaea. CoBaplant focuses on direct trade and mainly serves retail and cash-and-carry customers. Their range is put online via FloraXchange (FX) and Floriday. Processing and printing of the letters is done via Olsthoorn's software package.
Starting with Floriday
Last November, CoBaplant started transferring their range of products from FloraXchange to Floriday. Coen got to know the various functionalities in the platform by attending the workshops given by the Floriday experts. By participating in these workshops, Coen was able to gain more knowledge about the platform and all its possibilities. Because CoBaplant partly processes their trade in Olsthoorn's software package, they don't make use of all the functionalities in Floriday.
Supply and direct sales in Floriday
CoBaplant has all its supply in Floriday and FloraXchange. At the moment, Coen keeps track of its supply in both platforms, to be sure that it's visible to the buyers. CoBaplant still works with forward offers in FloraXchange. “This is very easy to set up in Floriday, so we'll get working with it immediately. Sometimes it's simply a matter of getting used to it and just doing it.”
Ultimately, CoBaplant has a clear wish: to bring everything together in one system in order to eventually increase their efficiency. Coen has noticed that not all buyers are doing their business in or through Floriday yet. For many growers, this means that they have to keep track of their supply in different places.
Availability filters and client-specific supply
CoBaplant makes a lot of use of the availability filters in Floriday. As a grower, you can use the availability filters to specify per article for which buyers this article is available or not. This allows you to determine which buyers can order which products from you. They also work with the stock countdown in Floriday, so that Coen is always sure that he can actually deliver the orders that come in from the customer. It often used to happen that more orders were placed than there were products available, which meant that you sometimes had to disappoint customers. This is prevented by using the availability filters.
In addition, CoBaplant uses customer-specific supply and customer-specific price groups. This allows them to link a type of offer to a certain price and only pass it on to those customers who are only allowed to have insight into this.. “This saves a lot of time,” says Coen.
Contracts
CoBaplant has also created a number of contracts in Floriday for various clients. “It takes some patience to set up the contract correctly the first time. All the information you enter must of course be correct. But once you’ve created one, you can quickly get started on the following contracts,” says Coen. “The call-off orders that are extracted from the contracts run smoothly. You have little to worry about here."
Plans and wishes
“Through the network in Floriday, we can see how our customers orient themselves and whether they're ordering from our shop, for example. We can respond to this and easily make the match. With the new spring trade, we can make more use of the network function in Floriday in the future, so that we can establish new connections with buyers and further expand the number of customers,” says Coen. CoBaplant also has certain wishes for the future. For instance, they would like to see a replacement for the graduated prices in the platform, so that they can better determine and quote the transport costs per customer.
Call for digitalisation
Coen would like to see us ultimately working towards a close collaboration, a clear trading process and a single platform: "We have to go for it together and it’s important that we do this together, both with growers and buyers. The will has to come from both sides. It is sometimes difficult to let go of the old and the familiar. But it’s also time for a change. So much used to be written on separate sheets of paper, emailed, messaged and phoned. This was a lot more prone to errors. Bringing everything together in one system is a lot clearer and ultimately more efficient for everyone.”