A historic moment for the port of Brixham this morning as they becam a fully remote internet based fish auction with buyers able to bid on fish from their desktop or laptop PCs.
Full story courtesy of the Brixham Fish Market website:
Today saw the launch of “Kosmos” the new cloud-based auction software introduced by Brixham Trawler Agents (BTA). “Kosmos” is a world’s first that enables fish buyers to purchase their fish at the Brixham fish market auction by logging in to the system via the internet.
Full story courtesy of the Brixham Fish Market website:
Today saw the launch of “Kosmos” the new cloud-based auction software introduced by Brixham Trawler Agents (BTA). “Kosmos” is a world’s first that enables fish buyers to purchase their fish at the Brixham fish market auction by logging in to the system via the internet.
In preparation for a 6am launch BTA staff had worked through the night carrying out final checks on the system as others looked on with a mixture of excitement and anxiety as launch time got closer.
Barry Young, BTA Managing Director stated “we were well prepared, months of planning had gone into this, we introduced new processes and both staff and buyers had undergone weeks of training to familiarise themselves with the new system. However, we did expect there to be a few glitches that are generally common with the introduction of a new software platform no matter how well planned”.
Fortunately, everything ran as expected with between 65 and 70 buyers logged in and buying fish through this new process. Many of the buyers had been anxious about using the new fish market auction system but afterwards, the feedback was very positive with many stating that they were much more confident and looking forward to using the system tomorrow.
One of the buyers who had expressed a little skepticism on the move to the new clock auction was Les Daniels, Purchasing Director, Wright Bros Ltd. With years of experience buying fish at the traditional shout auction to directly supply Wright Brothers’ 5 restaurants in London, Les was unsure about the move to buy fish via his PC.
After the auction BTA spoke to Les and he said, “in all fairness to Barry and to the staff at BTA it went very smoothly and I was very pleasantly surprised. It’s a completely different environment but you’ve got to move with the times and embrace change. I was actually the first bidder and bought a large box of Dover Sole from my office in Paignton. There were no issues at all, everything was excellent”.
Kurt de Lange, the fish consultant retained by BTA to manage the project has plenty of experience in the launch of new systems and was on-hand to provide support where necessary.
As Kurt said “you never know what might happen when you go live but it turned out really well. All of the processes ran smoothly both from the buyers perspective and BTA’s. We learned a few things and we will introduce a few tweaks to the software that will improve a few of the processes and simplify some of the others”.
Auxcis, the Belgian software provider who created “Kosmos” will be at BTA’s offices all week to lend support and ensure the smooth operation of the system continues.
It’s been a great start and things can only get better as BTA and the buyers get more comfortable with this new system.