Landgard Leads with CAS RDH
Information Platform

Landgard has created a user-friendly online information platform for its business partners in the plant and flower trade, which makes it significantly easier for them to work with the producers’ cooperative for flowers, plants, fruits, and vegetables in Germany. The consultants at Hamburg-based CAS AG are responsible for the technology used and the implementation of the project. Landgard built its new information system based on the CAS Realtime Data Hub (CAS RDH) solution, which enables numerous companies to access data stored in a wide variety of systems efficiently and consistently.

Landgard’s new portal gives buyers of the goods, specialty flower retailers, and growers alike access to information on products, quantities, and auction prices, as well as on deliveries of purchased goods and documents such as contracts and route schedules. Since Landgard’s business partners also need this information while they are on the go, it is particularly valuable to them that the portal can be used seamlessly on mobile devices.

For example, Landgard’s information system allows customers to find out in advance about the items being offered at the auction. The system also gives them an overview of past price trends.

This information is equally valuable to suppliers of goods: it allows them to track how their products are selling at auction and at what prices. The ability to view average, highest, and lowest prices across all sales channels—made possible by user-friendly filter functions—makes it easier for you to evaluate your own business.

On the portal, business partners can also use a route planner to see when each carrier will deliver which goods. This is especially important for specialty flower and plant retailers so they can plan for the space and staffing needed to receive deliveries, such as CC plant carts.

Using the CAS RDH solution, Landgard was able to deploy the portal for collaborative document management with its business partners: This allows users to view role-specific documents—such as contract documents and route schedules—via the portal and download them as PDF files.

The predecessor to the new information system was technologically outdated and significantly less user-friendly than the new solution. There was no personalized user view, and users had very few filtering options. There was also no way to use the system on mobile devices.
With the new solution based on CAS RDH, the project partners are able to efficiently provide a user-friendly view of data stored in various SAP, IBM, and Microsoft Navision systems used by the flower and plant wholesaler. In addition to the solution’s usability across all mobile devices, users also benefit from significantly improved downloads of Excel and PDF documents.
Among other things, Landgard had evaluated using the SAP Portal as the technological foundation for the new platform. However, SAP’s initial cost estimate prompted the wholesaler to look for alternatives—because the cooperative’s stated goal was not to burden either its members or its customers with the costs of implementing the system.

The Landgard team therefore decided to implement the CAS RDH solution to reduce its dependence on the pricing policies of large software companies. With this software, CAS AG offers a secure and infinitely scalable solution at a fair, fixed price, regardless of the number of users, data volumes, or other metrics.
Reiner Domogala, Head of Integration Services at Landgard, is very pleased with the decision to choose this solution and the consultants at CAS AG as project partners: “CAS RDH is a robust product. Our collaboration with the consultants at CAS AG is always on an equal footing, both personally and professionally.” The development and implementation of the information system went so well under the leadership of CAS AG that Landgard has since put two additional enterprise solutions based on CAS RHD into operation.
Reiner Domogala is also satisfied with the project timeline for the development and implementation of the new Landgard information system: A proof-of-concept, which also involved selected suppliers, was successfully completed after just three months. Just six months later, the project partners had put the new Landgard information system into operation.

“We’re a small team and don’t have time to manage the operation of each of our applications,” says Reiner Domogala of Landgard. The solutions must therefore have a very low error rate. “A system like this simply has to run smoothly, without any complications. And that requirement was fully met here,” he says.
Landgard also appreciates that the new system provides detailed user statistics and data on system utilization. “It’s also very helpful for internal communication to be able to show exactly how our partners use a system,” says Reiner Domogala. The new portal has been well received by Landgard’s business partners: Of a total of 3,500 suppliers, 1,300 were already using the system in May 2022—most of them almost every day.

Source: This article originally appeared on Open PR