Colleagues sharing their stories with passion

Alex Pret

Meet Alex Pret, who has been part of Heemskerk Flowers for over 25 years. As head of invoicing, Alex thrives in the fast-paced environment of his department, tackling challenges, solving problems, and ensuring smooth operations across teams with his dedication and expertise.

In the invoicing department the telephone rings constantly, the e-mails pour in and it’s (almost) never quiet. And it is that in particular that Alex Pret, head of invoicing, loves! The frenetic activity and constantly challenge are what have kept him doing this job at Heemskerk Flowers for over 25 years. We talked to him about ‘caring about the business’ and his activities.

What does a normal working day look like for you?

Really every day is different, because every day there are different things that we in the invoicing department have to deal with. My day starts between 5.00 and 6.00 a.m. I always start by distributing the orders to our lines and customers. There is also the daily recurring task of arranging inspections for all the plants going to the United Kingdom - that’s quite time-consuming work that is the result of Brexit. Other tasks are creating new order lists or checking the VAT codes and customer details for new customers. But really I think the best description for our department is that we are ‘troubleshooters’. If there are problems somewhere in the company or things that are not running smoothly, colleagues often come to us. We work with a lot of systems, so we can resolve a lot of problems. That makes things very dynamic and means that we have a lot of contact with different departments. Every day I get calls from almost every department.

You’ve been working in this department for 25 years. What have been the biggest changes in the invoicing department over that time?

A lot has changed. ‘Back in the day’ a lot was still done by hand. To give an example: we got a call soon as an order was fully packed and was waiting on carts to be loaded onto a truck. Our colleague from the dispatch department called us to report the number of carts. We then worked out in Excel what the costs were for the volume, and we put that on the invoice. You can’t imagine it being done like that nowadays. And it wouldn’t be possible either, with so many orders. 80% of the invoices are now generated automatically. Exceptions include invoices for Switzerland, which we do still do by hand.

What do you most enjoy about your job?

Really I enjoy all the activities. I’m doing exactly what I love. I do get a lot of satisfaction when there is intense pressure and everything still runs smoothly. So all the papers and documents are correct. And we can do that with our department, because we really are a well-oiled machine. I have been working with my colleague Niels for years. We can totally depend on one another, we really are completely in tune. And since a few months we’ve also got a new colleague Brian. He’s still in his induction period. We are good and friendly team!

You’re being called ‘Alex who knows it all’. Why is that?

I think that’s because I have been working for the company for a long time. And despite the fact that I have only worked in one department throughout that time, I do have a lot of contact with all the departments. I’m familiar with all the systems that are used, so that I know what happens if you press a particular button or scan a cart. If something goes wrong with that, people turn to me. I would say I’m very committed to the company, and I think it’s important that everything runs smoothly. Not only in my own department, but everywhere. That does mean that I can sometimes get a bit wound up if things do not run smoothly. I go and find out what has happened or think about what can be improved. That again shows my ‘caring for the business’. We are all one team together, so it’s good if we share ideas with one another. It can only make the business better!