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Here is a scenario: 1,000 calibrachoa cuttings just arrived in your greenhouse. But they’re in really bad shape. What to do?
How do you notify your purchasing team so they can buy more? How many cuttings do you already have in inventory? Can you use possible substitutes? Will a different variety be OK?
If you can’t answer these questions quickly, you likely have bottlenecks in your technology systems. Perhaps it’s legacy software, isolated data, or aging hardware. Or maybe key information is written on a clipboard or stored inside someone’s head. No matter the cause, it’s difficult to get the data you need to run your business—especially during the busy growing and selling seasons.
To overcome the lack of access to real-time data, your operations team must complete daily acts of heroism to figure out how to fulfill customer orders on time. While you love their hustle, you also realize how inefficient the process is. It may lead to lost sales and low margins.
Technology bottlenecks usually occur as greenhouses enjoy success and their businesses grow rapidly. Starting out, a basic accounting solution, spreadsheets saved to a local drive, and tribal knowledge shared by word-of-mouth works OK. Why fix something that isn’t broken?
But as more and more customers come on board, as you hire more employees, and as key people leave the business, it’s almost impossible to maintain an efficient operation. All the data resides in isolated technology systems and inside people’s brains.
You can’t consolidate and analyze it quickly. Important decisions get delayed by a week or even a month—when it’s too late to adjust to changes in production and customer demand.
Another challenge with aging software and hardware comes when you rely on one person to keep it all running. They may have programmed unique processes for your accounting system or formulas for your spreadsheets. While this person may be one of your heroes, they can’t scale their bandwidth as you grow. If they leave the company, it may be difficult to find someone new who knows how to manage the older, customized technology.
Perhaps your IT person will stick with you for the long term. However, if they work with legacy technology to export data from multiple systems and help your frontline staff create reports, they won’t be able to generate the information in real time. For reports on managing plant availability, production ready dates, and labor as well as sales forecasting to actual, they might also have to collect hard-copy notes.
As a result, it might take a week to compile and present the information with a clear picture of what’s happening right now so you can make decisions and act on a plan. You may not know, for example, how much labor you used last week and what you need next week.
The best way for greenhouse growers to overcome the challenge of technology bottlenecks that prevent access to real-time data is to deploy an ERP (enterprise resource planning) solution. When tailored for the horticulture industry, such solutions combine the ability to manage financials with workflows to the entire planning through fulfilment lifecycle.
Leading solutions for greenhouse growers—like SilverLeaf from Velosio running on the Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central ERP platform—also easily integrate with productivity. This enables automatic data exchanges with tools such as Microsoft Excel, Customer Engagement (CRM), Power BI (reporting), and Teams (collaboration) as well as the third-party add-ons you already use. These can include warehouse management, shipping, and online payment services.
By integrating data from multiple systems, SilverLeaf allows you to generate reports in real time. Because the software runs in the cloud, you also benefit from easy connectivity. Your team can access reports from anywhere on any device. Using the cloud also means you receive software updates automatically with no interruptions to your business. This ensures your team always wields the latest ERP capabilities.
SilverLeaf Customer’s Perspective
Velosio gave us a very realistic idea of the total cost of the solution instead of trying to just sell the deal and then stacking a bunch of stuff on the end. They also often asked us for feedback on SilverLeaf. It’s nice to have the connection with Velosio where we can help further advance the system. Velosio has it all-a on-stop-shop for all we need-and the support is local and timely.
Ryan Porter, Controller, Milgro Nursery
Going back to the example of the calibrachoa cuttings. The situation changes completely with SilverLeaf in action. When the greenhouse team scans the cuttings on their mobile devices, they can report them as unusable with a couple of clicks. SilverLeaf then automatically triggers a purchasing workflow to order replacements.
SilverLeaf also notifies the fulfillment team with an inventory report to determine if you will fall behind on customer orders. The production schedule will show you don’t have enough cuttings to assemble into finished goods—so you can reallocate those resources elsewhere. This cutting order incident also triggers an update to your profitability report, showing for instance that you will need to pay for expedited freight when placing the new order or forcing a substitute for customers’ orders that may be more expensive.
As this scenario illustrates, SilverLeaf triggers trickle-down processes and information updates. One person identifies a problem, and everyone knows about it right away—as opposed to an email or a spreadsheet that might take a couple of days or a week to deliver the critical information.
The story about the calibrachoa cuttings is just one example of how SilverLeaf streamlines operations and allows real-time data to flow automatically. As another example, since SilverLeaf integrates with the Microsoft technology stack, you can work on a purchase order and immediately send a link to users in Teams to communicate the information directly to anyone who manages that purchase order. When they click on the link in Teams, it brings them to the purchase order in SilverLeaf.
When the ordered products arrive, the warehouse can scan the shipment, and SilverLeaf notifies the purchasing team and production team right away. No need to call, send an email, or wait until the warehouse team finishes unloading the truck. Everyone knows the order has arrived and whether there’s anything wrong that needs to be adjusted.
The data that greenhouse managers need has always been available. But the manual effort to pull together a report is so burdensome, many don’t even bother. By the time they collect everything and figure out how to run the report, it’s too late.
SilverLeaf Customer’s Perspective
We have much more visibility into the business without calling someone up to see what’s happening or shuffling spreadsheets. I live how SilverLeaf makes things so much easier.
Brian Hendrick, Director of Information Systems, Fluresh
But the combination of SilverLeaf and Power BI removes this roadblock and delivers instant insights. Two reports the warehouse crew will appreciate recommend how to configure racks with different quantities of plants and how to load trucks destined for multiple customer sites. You can see a preview of each rack and each truckload in case adjustments are needed. These reports can be generated directly in the system or pushed to a source such as Power BI.
SilverLeaf can also run a live report from Google Maps on the best route to drive the truck. This, along with the configured placement of racks in the trucks allows the racks to roll right off the trucks and quickly into the customer locations.
Another handy report is item availability, which you can export to Excel or integrated to a company website. You can instantly create multiple availability lists to factor in specific items and locations as well as item availability that’s unique for particular customers.
Ultimately, with the reports SilverLeaf quickly generates enabling your team to work more efficiently, you can be more responsive in meeting your customer demands, which will help your business continue its rapid growth.
To learn more about how SilverLeaf running on the Dynamics 365 Business Central ERP platform can help your greenhouse operations, check out this Velosio e-book, Boosting Profitability and Growth with Data-Driven Insights, or contact Velosio today. We’re here to help.
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