Processing more than 100,000 transactions a day and trading a total of 400,000 plant and flower varieties, the cooperative Royal FloraHolland is the world’s largest marketplace for floriculture products. Based on a ‘partnership for life’, NPM portfolio company Conclusion manages Royal FloraHolland’s core IT infrastructure and complete application landscape, including its trading platforms. This not only guarantees the company’s critical processes, but also allows it to carefully design its digital-first strategy.
With growers and buyers throughout the world using the FloraHolland trading platform 24/7, this process needs to run flawlessly. Since Conclusion has ample experience in managing mission-critical applications (systems that must be in operation 24/7 – Ed.) for NS Dutch Railways and ProRail, the Utrecht-based IT services provider was an obvious choice of partner. According to Gerhard van der Bijl, Royal FloraHolland’s Chief Digital Officer, quality, time-to-market, costs and cultural fit were the main reasons for entering into a partnership with Conclusion.
Van der Bijl: ‘Conclusion’s style of doing business involves proactively coming up with solutions for upgrading our core business model and achieving our growth objectives. This is crucial to the success of the 24/7 services we provide to our members and their customers. We are confident that this partnership will be successful.’
Conclusion CEO Engbert Verkoren adds: ‘Royal FloraHolland can now focus completely on its core business as a global marketplace for the floriculture industry. The fact that an international leader such as Royal FloraHolland relies on our IT services makes us proud. We refer to it as “Shut-eye as a service.”’
