Booker Flowers and Gifts

I had experience of using 2 order management systems, one from a leading relay company and one that had been around for a long time. Although they kept all my orders in one place and helped me manage my orders on a day-to-day basis, I found the delivery features sadly lacking, and whilst this was a minor problem on a day-to-day basis, at peak this scaled to be a massive problem. Often leaving me sorting and organising my routes at stupid o'clock the night before a peak. To help reduce my carbon footprint I also wanted to go paperless, and this was not possible on either system or other solutions that were on the market at the time.

On a day-to-day basis the shortcomings were annoying but were possible to work around by adding spreadsheets, extra paper, and taking on additional administrative burdens. During peaks this became problematic because all the workarounds involved time. I was also aware that customers were increasingly asking for notifications and photos, and that the existing software could not provide that.

To free up my time especially at peaks, to give good customer service and go paperless.

Delivery routing and notifications, and the ability to upload my peak stock and substitute easily so that I know what bouquets I have left to sell at any given point during a peak. The Event module has also streamlined my wedding and event process and resulted in more bookings.

The diary and planner system, which allows me to keep track of daily tasks and appointments. Being able to link these tasks to orders is also really useful, giving an audit trail of what is done, when, and by whom. Custom workflows to create automatic tasks linked to certain types of orders.

The initial setup of any software is going to take time, such as loading customers and products onto the system, however Lewis made this as painless as possible.

Although sceptical at first and resistant to learning a new system, the team were pleasantly surprised by how easy it was to use and really impressed with how it keeps track of everything.

It totally knocks the socks off them and has revolutionised how I spend my time, especially during peaks.

At peaks, either myself or a member of staff was chained to the computer keeping track of orders as they came in, manually typing them into a spreadsheet for delivery run and make-up purposes. Whilst also trying to keep track of what is sold and what we still have to sell. Now the software does most of this for us, meaning a member of staff is now free to make up and serve customers just when we need them to.

Totally and more.

The customers love the notification system and especially the photo of the flowers they receive upon delivery, and it is something that regularly gets mentioned in reviews. Reviews have incidentally increased since the implementation of the system, as the software automates asking for feedback.

The software has made our business operate more smoothly - on a day-to-day basis no more fighting with printers or forgetting to put the bins out. And at peaks, giving us an extra person to help, meaning we all get home a bit earlier. It has freed up my time, allowing me to work on my business rather than in it.