Interflora has used an ebusiness system to reduce order processing times and increase competitiveness.

The flower delivery company has also managed to improve IT security for its network of 1,800 UK member florists.

Interflora has installed BT’s ebusiness system to replace manual dial-up connections which were delaying the processing of orders.

‘The dial-up connections would sometimes fail and impact on the time it took to fulfil orders,’ said Mike Heath, head of support at Interflora.

‘The competitiveness of the industry has surged, and to meet customer demand for flowers within hours we needed to move order information much more quickly between our central systems and member florists.’

BT now hosts application and database servers with round-the-clock monitoring and maintenance. Wyse thin clients installed in the florists use a broadband connection to link with the central system through a virtual private network.

Whether customer orders are placed with member florists or via the Interflora web site they are all routed through the central order processing system.

Heath says the new system has tightened security.

‘Instead of having full-blown PCs with all the information held on them, florists just have the thin clients. They may look like PCs, but if they’re stolen there’s nothing on them. All the data is secured and locked down at BT’s data centre,’ he said.

The new system handled 72,000 orders on the Friday before Mother’s Day this year, compared with 50,000 on the busiest day in 2005.

But the transition was not all straightforward.

‘There were issues with the software concerning workflow. There was a slowdown with the order processing on screen at the florist end, while lots of over-head processing took place on the system,’ said Heath.

After making changes to the software, Heath says orders can now be taken in real time, which has increased the amount of business florists can do.

‘We guarantee same-day delivery for orders before 2pm, but this could be difficult under the old system for orders that came in at half past one. That’s no longer an issue,’ he said.

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