Winston Flowers: Continuing a Legacy of Beautiful Business with TRAVERSE

In 1944 Robert Winston and his son, Maynard, pushed their cart of flowers onto Boston’s Newbury Street. Little did they know, this small flower cart would flourish and grow into a widely respected New England business that has been named “Florist of the Year” and is a frequent “Best of Boston” award-winner.

Now a third generation, family-owned company run by David and Ted Winston, the company honors its family heritage by continuing to blend tradition with cutting-edge, modern floral designs. Winston Flowers is one of the nation’s most highly regarded florists. Although they now have seven shops throughout New England, they still maintain the shop where it all began on Newbury Street.

One year ago, in order to take advantage of new technology, inventory tracking and greater historical information for their seven stores, Winston Flowers made a switch to TRAVERSE Business and Accounting Software from Open Systems, Inc.

Tracking and transferring goods between multiple locations

“Winston Flowers’ inventory is coming and going through the busiest times of the year, the holidays! There is no downtime in between our biggest holidays -Valentine’s Day, Mother’s Day and Christmas- as we are busily prepping in-between,” said Rand Ross, the Inventory Manager at Winston Flowers for six years. For the past year, Rand and a handful of colleagues at their flagship store have successfully and happily relied on TRAVERSE across departments to help handle the bustling schedule.

Rand specifically uses TRAVERSE to track and transfer the inventory of hard goods. “These goods range from furniture to mirrors and candles to hanging-light fixtures.” Winston Flowers is constantly receiving and dispersing these hard goods as their designers work with customers to create specific visions for special occasions, large and small.

Tying it all together

Mabel Egan has worked in Winston Flowers’ Accounting department for 25 years. This is no easy feat, as they have added more stores, taken on greater business and work with independent floral shops and growers across the United States and the world!

Mabel and her team keep all of this straight with the Accounting and General Ledger functionalities of TRAVERSE. “The switch to TRAVERSE definitely saved us time with the multiple tabs we can open and the ability to toggle back and forth. Our old system did not allow that, we were limited to viewing one screen at a time. We would have to close Accounts Payable in order to open General Ledger or Inventory. TRAVERSE allows us to view everything we need at the same time.”

TRAVERSE also allows Mabel and her colleagues to save or output reports to different formats giving them flexibility on how they want to present their data. Mabel said she finds this to be the most important part of reporting.

A flourishing business looks to the future

Now that they have a handle on all of the capabilities of TRAVERSE, Mabel said they are looking to implement the software in even more ways, “We have a pretty good handle on it now and are still learning new tricks that help us every day. Our next phase is to manage our warehouse and inventory with scanner system.”

The Winston Flowers team mainly use TRAVERSE for the sales side of the business, but have plans that in the future they’ll be able to track the event side of their business as well. Since the event side of the business can range from weddings for their long-time neighbors all the way to the White House, there is great potential for growth in the way they utilize the Business & Accounting Software.

Rand, Mabel and the rest of their Winston Flowers family enjoy working with companies who share their passion for excellence and innovation. Open Systems, Inc. is excited to support the growth of Winston Flowers, and we look forward to many more years of helping to keep their business fresh and cutting-edge.