That was certainly the case for the Dutch cooperative Royal FloraHolland, the largest flower auction in the world. The company was struggling with an outdated and complex IT landscape. In 2016, the cooperative decided it was time to change course. With a bold and clear programme: ‘Building the future while renovating the core’. Although Royal FloraHolland initiated the innovation into a digital marketplace, it contacted Conclusion for the renovation of the core. We moved the on-premises IT landscape to the public cloud, including all applications. This complex operation ultimately resulted in the efficient and flexible landscape with which Royal FloraHolland can position itself innovatively on the international market.
Royal FloraHolland is the world’s largest flower and plant auction. More than 4,000 growers are affiliated with this traditional Dutch cooperative, which processes more than 100,000 transactions per day and has an annual turnover of 4.6 billion euros. The auction supplies the world with fresh flowers and plants every day. This giant enterprise makes a considerable contribution to the Dutch economy, and the responsibility for the continued existence of the company is equally large.
Royal FloraHolland traditionally uses 38 auction clocks to sell flowers and plants worldwide. Buyers compete for the lots, both on location and remotely. Nevertheless, more and more buyers and growers were dealing with each directly outside the physical auction. This revealed an opportunity to help them with a digital platform, and in this way keep them 'on board'. ‘We noticed that our processes weren’t up to this task,’ says André van der Linden, CIO at Royal FloraHolland. ‘As a consequence, there was a risk of us failing to realize international growth. Our global relevance in the floriculture sector was in danger of a decline in the long term.’
It was therefore crucial to streamline the entire process more, from auctioning to logistical and financial processing. The goal was a zero-risk digital transformation that allowed the organization to remain operational 24/7 and created a dynamic floriculture platform.
“Our vision was for a dynamic floriculture platform, and a digital, data-driven marketplace. However, our application landscape turned out to be unsuitable for that purpose.”
André van der Linden
Royal FloraHolland CIO
Royal FloraHolland chose Conclusion as its partner to build this digital trading platform. The task was to transform the current IT into a state-of-the-art IT environment that would allow good compatibility with Floriday, the name of the trading platform. A fully scalable IT environment, completely in the public cloud, with all the reduced costs and other advantages that this entails. This put Royal FloraHolland in a position to set up a platform that successfully brings together the physical and digital worlds.
Modernizing your entire IT landscape requires an extensive transformation process. Why choose Conclusion? For three reasons. In the first place, we share the drive to make a solid transformation to the cloud. Secondly, Royal FloraHolland was attracted by our ecosystem. In addition, alongside the expertise in the required infrastructure, network, and applications, they also wanted to make long-term use of other specializations in our Conclusion ecosystem. That was the third reason: from the outset, the joint intention was to look beyond a project with a limited timeframe.
Royal FloraHolland also wanted to embed future resilience and agility, and stay on top of innovation opportunities. For all these reasons, the company entered into a lifetime partnership with us for its digital transformation. We accepted responsibility for transforming the application landscape, the networks, the public cloud, and the on-premises infrastructure.
Andre van der Linden: ‘Conclusion played a decisive role in the strategy, realization, and execution of our platform. All applications, including the commercial, logistics, and financial systems, have been modernized. Our partnership proved to be an essential precondition for successfully navigating the road to a digital trading platform.’
“Conclusion played a decisive role in the strategy and execution of our platform.”
André van der Linden
Royal FloraHolland CIO
Prior to the implementation, we considered our objectives carefully. Implementation of the new EPD has enabled us to set up our processes effectively, work more efficiently, and achieve greater uniformity in the way we work. Employees are supported in their tasks and, at the same time, we can improve the quality of our care. In addition, it is now possible to exchange data digitally with some of our supply chain partners; for example, we can now receive lab results digitally from several laboratories.
Now – so soon after going live – it's clear that the decision to invest in digitalization will really help us achieve our objectives. At first, we thought it would be quite a big step for the nursing team to switch from paper to digital. But the nurses are embracing this new way of working and think it is fantastic. The structure of the software helps them work more accurately and this improves the quality of registrations. It is also useful to be able to read the reference information with other disciplines. In my own work as a neurologist, I have noticed greater efficiency. I save time on administrative tasks as I can reuse data easily. In addition, clients themselves can register epileptic seizures digitally by using the portal linked to the EPD. I can then compare this information to the medication used. This allows me to provide targeted treatment, which improves the quality of the care that the client receives.
At the moment, the EPD is being further optimized. Due to our focus on epilepsy and sleep medicine, we have specific requirements when it comes to using the EPD. We also pay continuous attention to long-term adoption and establishing a clear and straightforward working method.
The HiX project was the catalyst for the creation of the CMIO position at SEIN. Now that the EPD has gone live, we will also consider further options. Because one thing is certain: SEIN will be investing further in digitalization.
Royal FloraHolland has to be able to trust its technology 100%, so Conclusion shouldered the responsibility for this part. Digital process outsourcing. Creating peace of mind for our customers. One of our showpieces.
In this way, we worked towards future-proofing together
Together with Royal FloraHolland, we migrated and transformed the complex IT landscape to the public cloud: we streamlined 300 business applications back to 140 business applications in the Cloud, 50 SaaS, and 10 on-premises. It marked the end of duplicates and unused functions, and greatly simplified the complexity of the landscape and management.
Van der Linden: ‘The application landscape is the bedrock of our work, and is therefore business-critical. Everything has to be available, agile, and resilient at all times.’ The entire application landscape was rationalized: standard apps, custom apps, old, new, everything. All applications were then updated, modernized and scripted to be automatically tested and rolled out. The often outdated and highly intertwined infrastructure, which caused multiple complex failures, was unravelled in the cloud and separated into autonomous blocks, so that a failure in one component doesn’t take the entire landscape down with it. This major intervention took 20 months of work to complete, but the result is fantastic. The landscape is now scalable, and therefore ready for the future of the digital auction.
The following Conclusion ecosystem business units worked or are still working together on this part:
Conclusion Mission Critical, part of our ecosystem, manages the business-critical IT landscape of Royal FloraHolland 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. As a result, the IT system is always protected against cybercrime, and agile for future improvements. This ensures the auction remains operational around the clock, both now and in the future.
The following Conclusion business units worked together on this part:
Conclusion and Royal FloraHolland have entered into a lifetime partnership to work on digital transformation, where our unique ecosystem, consisting of more than 28 independent business units, bears responsibility as the technology partner for Royal FloraHolland. Depending on needs, Conclusion can scale up or down where necessary, in line with Royal FloraHolland’s wishes. Thanks to this lifetime partnership, Royal FloraHolland can guarantee delivery reliability and minimize disruptions, and has prepared itself for the digital future of Floriday. That was, after all, Royal FloraHolland’s ultimate goal.
All relevant Conclusion business units are involved in the Lifetime partnership.
Directeur