The strength of transparent supply chain collaboration

1. Grower You are the product specialist: you know the product from its first leaves to full maturity. You want contact with the retail sector to gain understanding of consumers and to guarantee your sales.
2. Trading partner The supply chain coordinator: makes the link between retailer and grower. Uses market knowledge to select from the supply and ensure that it matches retail demand. Orchestrates the entire process.
3. Retailer Focus on the consumer. Formula oriented. Wants to know more about product origin and to share shelf knowledge in order to further optimise the response to customer needs.
4. Consumer Each retailer aims to please its own clientele, its own “consumer”. Our selection must be a perfect match for those customers. What motivates them?





The platform
Chain4S
The platform Chain4S (chain force) will radically change the way we do business in the floriculture sector. Not words, not promises, just action. Doing business in an open and transparent manner. Sharing information, working together and therefore growing together. Chain4S will utilise the strength of the chain to achieve better sales.
Together.


The interactive supply chain platform Chain4S was developed to meet the increasing demand for transparency in the (floriculture) supply chain, both from growers on the production side and retailers on the consumer side.
The Retail Division of Dutch Flower Group (DFG) has many years of experience in large-scale international retail – from supermarket chains to DIY stores – and in response to increasing demand decided to invest in a platform that really puts transparency into practice.
Van Dijk Flora, one of the companies in the DFG Retail Division, developed the platform under the name Chain4S in conjunction with its partner Solware.
The name in itself – Chain4S (chain force) – sums up the supply chain platform. It’s about the entire supply chain, from producer via trading partner to retailer, with the ultimate aim of achieving an even better service for the consumer. Four parties in the supply chain, which is why the 4 is part of the logo.

Chain4S is a closed supply chain system, where all information about the basis, background and progress of the order is shared – in a safe, online and easily accessible manner – between the exclusive supply chain partners.

While the process already took place in the supply chain, it wasn’t always transparent and open. This is what Dutch Flower Group, and based on its intrinsic strategy Van Dijk Flora, now want to achieve.
The platform, which creates a closed supply chain between the parties in the chain for each order, offers a visually attractive interface. It contains information about the order that provides real added value for all the parties and also keeps them in contact so they can further improve all aspects of their collaboration, allowing them to make an even better proposition to the consumer.

The possibilities in the first version of the platform are already exceptional:
  • Transparent presentation of growers regarding production, varieties, certifications and online real-time information that can be shared with the (international) supply chain partners. The grower can view sales data, retail presentations and other relevant information within its order.
  • Specific information about the retailer, which in turn can simply and quickly gain visual access to the status and progress of all current orders, regardless of language and location. Easier to manage, all category information available online, and open exchange of relevant information within the closed (order) supply chain.
  • Input from the trading partner, the retailer’s partner, to ensure instant, up-to-the-minute insight into the coordination of the total category management process for each plants and/or flowers order.
All supply chain parties can safely and openly exchange information, share order-related photographs or documents and keep each other informed online about the planning and progress of activities. All in a visually attractive way, and independent of country and/or language.

After the order has been delivered, it can still be viewed (history) at any time by all the supply chain parties concerned, so it remains available with full evaluation based on the experiences and assessment when new actions take place.
The Chain4S platform offers a fast, accessible and transparent method of collaboration between grower, trading partner and retailer in a safe, closed environment. Information about orders can be made available and archived in a professional and visually attractive manner, within a closed supply chain.

Chain4S gives the grower access to retail information, consumer data and relevant topics such as selling price, mark-downs and losses, and allows the grower to make presentations and engage in dialogue with the retailer. It offers the trading partner the opportunity to communicate openly about the progress of managing the order and to exchange all category information, such as store visits, sales, competitor information etc. And with Chain4S the retailer has easy access to an up-to-the-minute overview of current orders, with all relevant information about the grower and the logistic route up to the retail presentation, and can even engage in dialogue with the source.



Mobile
The interactive supply chain platform Chain4S was developed to meet the increasing demand for transparency in the (floriculture) supply chain, both from growers on the production side and retailers on the consumer side. For fast, easy-access knowledge sharing within the (closed) supply chain, wherever and whenever, there’s also a mobile application: the Chain4S Messenger. This app makes it incredibly easy to exchange information in closed supply chains.