Marcy is the floral manager at a large wedding company in Orlando, FL and has a conundrum. She knows that her team needs help organizing events. Florists has literally thousands of moving parts every event. Their shop commonly has a problem with over or under ordering, their team members adjust pricing on whims, and each team member seems to have their own way of doing things.
Marcy has looked into Curate to get her team (and her sanity) back on track, but it's hard to make a shift to a new software for a large organization. How can she implement a new system effectively?
Here are our biggest tips from how other large florists have adapted:
- Start with administrative tasks first. Instead of immediately trying to create proposals for your brides, start with something like shopping lists. Simply create a new event and add the necessary recipes. You'll be using the "Add New" tool to help create your floral library and rentals how you'd like it. The software automatically generates your recipe sheet and shopping list for that event. This tip alone saved one of our users 8 hours a week because of the number of weddings they did. The great part about the software is that you'll immediately start getting familiar with how proposals are created - even though you're only using the shopping lists. You can even assign designers to each arrangement for your recipe sheet when you're ready to execute the event.
- Focus on pricing next. Once you're comfortable with adding the recipes to each event, move towards getting your pricing correct. At this point, you are essentially recreating the proposal you've already given to your clients (for internal use only). You'll want to have your delivery fees and markups set up the way you'd like them to be in your profile. Once you're done, you will want to click "New Client Version." This will help with the estimates of how much you should spend for each event and will also help once the reports feature is released.
- Create the completely designed proposals. If you've got your pricing and recipes on point, then look at adding a contract and payment schedule. You can even have a customized header photo behind each of these. Add any event details like your strike time in your section. Once you have everything attractive and representing your brand, you can create a new client version and then share the "Version 1 Link" with the client. This is a web link that allows the client to see the finished proposal; it optimizes it for their device (whether phone or desktop); and also allows them to digitally sign (if you've added a contract).
- Start using the software in consultations. Many of our florists utilize the software within their consultations. They chat with the client and build the recipes as they go through the consultation. At the end of the consultation, they immediately know what kind of investment will be required and you immediately have the assurance that you're going to make profit on the event.
One big tip is to start with one techie team member and then add more team members as your move forward. Some larger florists prefer for their team members to have separate paid accounts due to keeping things organized. As we continue to progress in the software, we'll be introducing more features for larger teams. Currently, we do have a pipeline tool to help organize all the events.
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What is Curate.co? It's a floral studio management software made specifically for floral studio managers and wedding coordinators to help ensure they're spending less time in an excel sheet and more time executing flawless events.
