Management column: What if, is a very important question

In this series of columns, we give the floor to directors and managers of Royal FloraHolland. In this column, our CIO André van der Linden discusses (possible) disruptions and how to anticipate them.

Media reports on network failures or localised power supply outages appear more frequently than ever before. A failure of Instagram or WhatsApp is very annoying for some people, but on a corporate level, usually not immediately harmful. The electricity outage made itself felt last year when, in the run-up to Mother's Day, Aalsmeer-Zuid was hit by a power cut around 7am. Out of necessity, we then suspended auctioning until 8.00 am. Many will think, 'it won't be such a big deal'. Nevertheless, I think it is advisable to consider what the impact of prolonged outages might be on one's own critical business processes. Experience shows that things can always go wrong, either due to technical failure, a cyber-attack or human error. This is unfortunately unavoidable. From my role as CIO, I am very aware of this. The first question here is 'what are you in control of yourself, where do you rely on third-party systems and what alternatives can you already prepare yourself?'

Emergency portal
During the power outage at Aalsmeer-Oost, some buyers rushed to the Royal FloraHolland building across the street because there was power there. Others were prepared and used emergency generators. If you use the cloud, you can continue working via another PC if your own computer crashes. By doing so, you minimise the business impact if something goes wrong. This applies not only to administrative processes, but also to operational processes. If you can remotely control your own climate computer in the nursery, it means that if security is not in place, outsiders can do the same. By no means has every grower adjusted the default settings and uses, for example, a strong password. This shows where potential vulnerabilities are.

Of course, we take a comprehensive look at our own business processes ourselves. In our technological developments, we adopt a strategy of maximum independence, with modular development and decoupling of systems. Floriday is playing an increasingly important role in this. More and more growers and buyers are using Floriday for their daily commercial processes. The growing dependency and hence responsibility, calls for an alternative, should we ever face a large-scale failure. For example the barely imaginable scenario where the public cloud, in our case that of AWS, goes down. An Emergency Portal was therefore built, in a different cloud, offering growers limited but vital functionalities for the platform's two core processes: supply for auction and direct trading. We hope we never have to use this, but we are prepared for the unimaginable.

Vital infrastructure for the floriculture industry
Floriday is developing a sector platform with more and more functionalities. This brings with it great responsibility. Because the whole chain must be able to blindly trust in that platform. In the world of floriculture, Floriday is increasingly becoming a vital infrastructure, enabling us to make the chain more efficient in the interests of the whole sector. For example facilitating sustainability information that is increasingly demanded in the chain, such as footprint information and packaging data that will be requested in the future. By using new technology, such as API links, we can unlock this through Floriday. The existing old techniques like the VMP links, Florecoms, etc. are totally inadequate for this purpose. Think also of the EAB that, for example, is currently used to supply the auction trade. We will phase these out altogether by 2025.

With Floriday's growing importance, it is essential that Floriday runs uninterrupted. Yet we realise that any change within the digital platform leads to an opportunity for disruption. We have therefore adopted an approach that takes this into account. For example, by if things do not go well immediately, we can quickly reverse the change. We also choose to take small steps and experiment first and adjust if necessary. On the digital front, we are a learning organisation.

For other parts of the IT landscape, for example the IT network, our lesson is that we use specialised service providers in sub-areas more than before. Interestingly, this also saves us considerable costs. Specialists are able to solve a problem faster. They do so faster than all-rounders and thus the impact on business processes is smaller. That too is a form of cost saving.