| Electron User 4.10 July 1987 |
Electrons Are Saying It With Flowers!
Electron technology is helping people all over the country to say it with flowers. Interflora, the association of flower retailers, is placing comms equipped micros in all its 2,500 UK member's shops. The machines - labelled The Interflora Messenger - have been specifically built around the Electron's motherboard by British Telecom's business systems equipment division. By November, every Interflora shop in Britain will have the equipment, speeding up orders and saving on telephone calls.
Installation follows a successful trial with 50 shops in various parts of the country. "Once we got the Electron we knew we had the right machine for the job," said Keith Bentley, Interflora's head of communications and computer services. "The main problems have been with the software and the dot matrix printer. The original printer was not good enough and kept jamming, and the software which is stored on ROM proved difficult, but that has all been sorted and the system is now working perfectly." The cost is being met by Interflora, with the retailer paying a small handling charge on each order. Thanks to the new Electron-based system the average order can be sent in less than 20 seconds - instead of four minutes by telephone. Jill Carless of Tracy's Florists in Merseyside said: "At first I was apprehensive about using computers, but the system is really easy to use. It's good for business because we can serve customers while orders are transmitted instead of wasting time on the end of a telephone line." |
