Case Studies
Flowerland
Company Background
Flowerland is best described as a leading independent ‘Hobby Department Store’, with garden supplies being the largest segment of Flowerland’s 100,000 product lines. Operating from two centres in theThames Valley, Flowerland provides thousands of customers with products from specialist plants, paving stones and barbeque sets, to furniture, lighting and kitchen equipment.
The Challenge
- Multiple product lines made volumes, margins and stock-holdings data extraction difficult
- Existing system didn’t handle customer orders in the on-site restaurant
- Software not integrated with loyalty card scheme
The Solution
- Infinity POS system with Microsoft SQL Server technology installed
- System can efficiently manage vast portfolio of products
- Measurement tools and management reports available
- Part-payments and bespoke customer solutions easily managed
- Fourteen till points were installed across two locations
The Result
Hugh Evans, Managing Director of Flowerland comments: "We have been using Infinity for five years now. I have no doubt the performance Infinity delivers will be sufficient for our needs long into the future, enhancing the value of the original investment. Garden centres must be a testing environment for any EPOS system: as well as the complex product lines, the physical environment is dusty, hot, cold and wet, although thankfully not all at the same time. None of these challenges have proved difficult to Infinity’s performance or Triquestra UK’s ability to help us implement the system, on the contrary they have taken them in their stride."
Hugh Evans further adds: "Because of the complexity of our business, the critical development path has been staff skill in using the system. But as the system is simple and intuitive, it has always been able to expand as we have grown to use it in our business. The Triquestra support staff have solved any specific problems we have not been able to solve for ourselves. This is a great comfort and we find the annual maintenance agreement good value and essential; the upgrades are also welcome. Infinity has grown in phases as we have demanded, and in each phase we have got more out of the system to feed back into our operational processes. This evolutionary process has meant that Infinity is now the core of our business. We are using the system to measure profitability in real time, manage cash and improve return on capital employed on multi-sites and over several different business types."
