Teletext page 819 is an institution among Dutch football lovers. Several generations grew up with the phenomenon of teletext, which celebrated its 40th anniversary this year. According to the Dutch national broadcasting company, the era won’t be coming to an end any time soon, as there are still millions of people using teletext every day. The strength of teletext lies in the fact that it provides information in a clear and simple manner.
Unlike Royal FloraHolland, which recently replaced their old FloraneXt with the new Floriday Insights. What a deception. It certainly is a product of its time; all about looks, functionality is old-fashioned.
My generation doesn’t read manuals, all equipment and software are intuitive these days. But not Insights. They tell you to start with watching the instruction video on YouTube. Judging by the 100 views it got so far, it looks like I’m not the only person who skipped this 45-minute torture. Luckily, RFH published the instruction videos for FloraneXt online as well. These videos last only 2-4 minutes.
I’ve got to say they chose a very appropriate name for their new system; it does indeed provide lots of insight, but unfortunately no clarity. The worst about the whole Insights saga is that it can’t be used on mobile devices, while FloraneXt could. And this is 2020?
The transition to Insights is yet another painful example of the many things that are still going wrong within RFH. A clear, long-term vision aiming to strengthen the position of the grower is lacking. A sad realisation for a growers’ cooperative. If you’re unfamiliar with the background, and look no further than their policies, you might think it’s a buyers’ cooperative.
In fact, from a distance, Royal FloraHolland doesn’t look too different from a communist state. They tend to spend lots of money on megalomaniac projects that nobody benefits from. Our CEO wouldn’t be out of place in the Kremlin Palace of the sixties. Floriway is the most recent example: making the competition part of the RFH state apparatus, that’s completely in line with the old communist practices.
Now that we’re nearing the end of 2020, we can look back on an extraordinary year, which our sector sailed through much more smoothly than we could have hoped for in the beginning of April. Now, that’s a sign of the strength of our sector! All we need now is an auction that actively contributes to strengthening it even further. My proposal for 2021 is to replace the GMM with FloriSay – that’s the kind of instrument we’re still lacking in my opinion.
Thomas Fransen,
General manager Timaflor Kenya
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