FreshPortal Customer stories

Thomas Fransen of Timaflor Kenya

FreshPortal understands the urgency of the grower
Thomas Fransen of Timaflor Kenya

FreshPortal software is used worldwide by growers, traders and wholesale florists. One of those early users is the leading rose nursery Timaflor, which has five individual branches at the same location in Kenya. Manager Thomas Fransen: "On a cultivation area of 116 hectares we grow about thirty varieties of medium and large top quality roses. Our flowers go to an agent in the Netherlands who distributes them and also receives our invoices and packing lists. In the time before FreshPortal, four years ago now, we still made all invoices manually. So were the packing lists, which we made in Excel. Because manual input is prone to error, Timaflor felt the need for a watertight system. This is what FreshPortal was able to offer us." 

Since then, the FreshPortal grower software has allowed Timaflor to have a watertight system to work with. "What we put on an invoice we actually send. It is also possible to make one packing list from different locations without separate actions. That works just fine and also works much faster. We work with scanners. This switch has resulted in much more labor efficiency. But the FreshPortal software is also very handy administratively. Because previously crop registration required everything to be added up manually, now everything is correct in FreshPortal with one push of a button." 

"Especially over the past year, I can't help but say that the FreshPortal grower software runs very smoothly. If we need the helpdesk at all, it is always available and any problems are solved quickly and adequately. For us, this aspect in particular is extremely nice. FreshPortal understands the urgency of the grower and knows that I cannot wait until tomorrow to print my stickers, packing lists and invoices. In the beginning this was all a bit exciting for us, because we were the first rose nursery in Kenya with this system. We therefore encountered a few problems, as you always have with newly developed software. Fortunately, FreshPortal was not like "here is your new system and you have to figure it out. On the contrary, I only had to call the helpdesk and they took over the computer so they could make the necessary adjustments remotely. On all fronts, FreshPortal has always thought along with us. So many practical solutions have been devised that we now work with a wonderful system with which you can make few mistakes. The education level of our hard-working staff is not that high and then you need a simple system. That's what FreshPortal offers us."