I thought I’d share a bit about me and how I came to be working for this innovative company.
Originally from Dublin, I moved to Sussex in 1998 to forge my own path in life. Initially jumping from job to job to find out where my strengths lay, I ended up being drawn to roles that provided support to customers/clients/residents etc. Anything that meant I was helping someone was the job for me. During my 20+ years here in the UK, I’ve lived in Sussex, Scotland, Canada (for a brief spell), back to Scotland and finally settled back here where I live with my wife and daughter.
I joined my wife in her floristry business, officially, in 2014 but had been supporting her for sometime before then. I won’t lie, I knew NOTHING about flowers before I started and was your stereotypical “other half” who focussed on the deliveries, paperwork and doing the non-floristry tasks…… even washing the buckets! My background in offices and customer support came to the fore when I got to thinking there must be a more streamlined way to handle our deliveries, especially in peak periods. I was fast learning the floristry shorthand – having wondered why everyone wrote Laugh Out Loud in a card when it clearly meant Lots of Love… I struggled with deciphering some of the worst handwriting on an order pad known to man and my geeky self wondered if there was a solution to this. So, in 2015 I signed us up to Strelitzia Software. Much to the scepticism of my wife and our staff whose entire existence was in the “clip system”. I ploughed on regardless and dragged our little shop kicking and screaming into the 21st century! And now we wouldn’t be without it. It streamlined so many aspects of the business. It linked up to our website, our relay company, our in-house orders and it even has a very easy to use and follow invoicing system for those one off and repeat orders for corporate clients. We’ve seen the system go from legacy to the new cloud-based system and we’ve witnessed it develop into what we have today. We know there’s so much more in the pipeline and we’re very excited to see it continue to improve our operations.
So why did I want to work for Strelitzia? Easy really. I am a geek and I like making things easy. I mean, why have a dog and bark yourself eh? I’ve seen how this very handy bit of kit can reduce the manhours in sorting out delivery routes, creating invoices, manage workflow and reduce time on the phone when taking repeat orders from existing customers. When a regular customer calls and you already have most of their information already, then they feel like you care; and we do – it’s also nice not to have them repeat themselves every phone call.
Now we can track Strelitzia on our phones, the 2am panic ‘did I miss an order!’ is now thank fully a thing of the past; my wife’s anxiety levels have decreased, and that has to be a good thing!
Having seen Strelitzia grow from strength to strength, I can only see a positive future and I want to be part of that! So, if you’re reading this and haven’t yet signed up to this superb system, drop me an email and I’d be more than happy to arrange a chat with you about how it can help your business become more efficient, like ours has.
archie@strelitziasoftware.com or give me a bell on 01325 722398