Custom solutions for Small businesses

Fresh cut flower exporting is a specialised business. Products are moving in and out of season all the time, purchasing from hundreds of small growers requires extensive fulfillment flexibility, and all shipping is by air freight or priority trucking. Buying from growers in New Zealand and Australia for customers all over the world means foreign currencies and a variety of country-specific taxes and charges are involved.

As it happens, the owner of New Zealand Bloom is an IT-savvy entrepreneur with an MBA from Columbia University. In the company’s early days he wrote his own database solution using Microsoft Access for purchasing, price lists and shipping.

As the business grew, a more robust solution became a priority and he called us in to help. We took over support of his Access database, and later did a complete re-development. The result is “Fresh-Ex”, a powerful line-of-business application integrating all business functions including financial accounting. Based on a single SQL Server database, it has three tightly integrated “client” applications, linked over the network via a COM+ middle tier that ensures scalability and high-performance. New Zealand Bloom has offices in Auckland, Los Angeles and Osaka. Branches exchange data between their stand-alone custom systems and are supported directly by us via VPN.

See www.fresh-ex.com for more details.

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