Case 45 FastFlowers.com Robert Johnston Jane Babson set up FastFlowers.com three years ago to provide a small range of flowers to customers over the Internet. The site shows a range of wreaths, bouquets buttonholes and table displays suitable for 'all occasions'. Unlike her competitors who promise delivery sometime during the day, she offers delivery within one hour either side of an agreed delivery time, any time between 8.00 a.m. and 6.00 p.m. despite initial skepticism from friends and colleagues in the trade, she had success fully managed to negotiate with flower delivery companies, including some national and international chains, to meet her delivery targets. Indeed a survey of delivery times undertaken by a student friend last year showed that the average delivery time was 29.5 minutes after the agreed time with a standard deviation of 13.3 minutes. In the first year the business managed a turnover of 30,000 which has grown to 150,000. Jane now employs one person to help her deal with the orders which arrive by Internet, e-mail or phone. This involves sending e-mail acknowledgement of the order, and arranging delivery with a national flower delivery chain. If she is unable to find a company that is able or willing to fulfill the order on time, she arranges for her local florist to make up the order which she then sends by courter. With a margin of less than 10 per cent Jane was unwilling to employ extra staff as yet, but she was finding much of her time was taken up with dealing with what seemed to a rapidly increasing number of complaints about the late, and in a few cases, the early, delivery of flowers. When analyzing the complaints she noticed over half of them would have been delivered by just three of the seven national chains that she uses, Interflower, Fleuro and Blooms USA. She was reluctant to complain to the companies as good relations were essential because she had to negotiate prices and delivery times on every occasion. Furthermore, she did about 60 per cent of her business with these three. The alternative, sending flowers by courier, was much more expensive. Jane needed to understand what was happening so she selected one customer who should have received flowers from each of the suspect organizations on each day for the last two weeks (excluding Sundays). The result, in terms of Table 45.1 Results of delivery survey late/early Thu Fri Tue Sat Mon Tue Wed Interflower 60 45 40 Fleuro -15 45 70 BloomsUSA 20 30 15 Note: A minus signifies an early delivery. 70 80 20 Sat 50 -20 25 Mon 60 50 15 Fri 40 40 20 65 50 15 0 30 70 70 40 1

Questions 1 Evaluate the performance of FastFlowers' suppliers.

2 What do you think Jane should say to each of them?