Royal FloraHolland, heart of the international flower and plant trade, and manager of 4 million m² of real estate for trade and rental, needed an integral view of its costs. Finext's pragmatic approach resulted in an advanced and structured cost model. This led to efficient fact-driven decision-making, essential for Royal FloraHolland's future growth.
- Royal FloraHolland chose Finext for a quick start and good results.
- The collaboration led to rapid acceptance of the outcomes by users.
- Royal FloraHolland is now making decisions for future growth based on facts.
The need for integral insight
"All business units are financially managed separately. We do see that these divisions cooperate a lot and also use each other's services. And where the business units steer separately on financial figures, I wanted to move towards the integral picture," says Bas van Raaij Manager Corporate Control at Royal FloraHolland. In a first exercise, these integral costs were made visible in Excel. With the further development of this model, controlling became more and more labor-intensive. Bas adds: "We saw Finext as a partner for setting up a structural solution."
Alwin Dooijeweerd, lead consultant at Finext continues: "Bas came with the question: can you help us with cost insight? We then met with Bas and his colleague and first and foremost looked at their current Excel model. How is it structured? What insight do you have now? Why do you want that? What would you like to have better?".
Pragmatic approach
The Maturity Scan performed, with various stakeholders in the organization, led to a picture of the current situation and need for the future. After setting up a metamodel and tool selection, a Finext consultant and a Royal FloraHolland controller jointly set up a cost model in a pragmatic manner.
During this phase, a continuous feedback loop was used to understand the outcomes and relationships each time. This helped ensure a supported solution for the business. Which was an important factor, given that the business would also be using this information.
Lessons Learned
"For us, this project is really a voyage of discovery ... because of Finext's knowledge and experience, we didn't have to reinvent the wheel ourselves.... "
A proud Bas van Raaij: "It is fine to start small, as soon as you get traction and it gets bigger and as soon as you go more into the organization you can always automate. Don't go into the depth right away but take the organization in the width, of course you need that for that integrality. But once you start having more discussion with the business units the detail will come naturally!".
Bas continues: "All in all, we are very satisfied with the collaboration with Finext. For the knowledge and experience they brought with them and the speed it gave us right away in the project."
What does this give Royal FloraHolland?
Bas is pleased with the development and outcomes. He sees positive traction within the organization: discussions about costs are now better, input for strategic choices is better, and decisions are now made based on facts rather than feelings. Watch the video below.
Want to know more about this topic?
Barry and Alwin recently gave a webinar on the 7 steps to understanding customer profitability. Watch this webinar here.
