How Grower Direct Farms Achieved Accurate, Real-Time Inventory with Plant Partner ERP

Accurate inventory means that our team leaves at 5pm even during our peak season. No more working in the dark.

Ryan Horn
Owner

About Grower Direct Farms

Grower Direct Farms (GDF) is a family-owned and operated wholesale greenhouse located in Somers, Connecticut. Founded in 1981 with one acre of greenhouse, they have steadily grown to become one of the largest greenhouses in the Northeast. Their growth is built upon a singular foundation – an unrelenting commitment to the home gardener’s success so more people can experience the benefits that come with making plants a part of their life.

The Challenge

Inaccurate Inventory Creates Cascading Problems and That Decrease Revenue

Lack of Real-Time Inventory Visibility

Every season GDF would start out with a plan. They would create production schedules and sales targets and try to keep the thousands of moving pieces organized and on target. The problem was, once they got into the season they really had no idea how well the plan was being implemented because they had no visibility into their inventory.

We were winging it. We spent an enormous amount of time just trying to figure out what we needed to ship out the door.

Ryan Horn
Owner

To figure out what was available the team would physically ride around the 17 acres of greenhouses and count what they thought was ready inventory. Then they would manually hand the count to the order writers to give to their stores the following week. The team would always be wondering what inventory was available and what was going to be ready when.

Misalignment Between Production and Sales

There was also a disconnect between production and sales which meant that what was being grown was not always aligned with what was being sold. Production would grow crops that didn’t have a buyer and sales would sell crops that hadn’t been grown or weren’t ready This misalignment led to either a surplus of unsold items or shortages of in-demand products which led to lost revenue and wasted resources.

Operational Challenges During Peak Season

During peak season, the lack of accurate inventory information became very problematic. All of the little mistakes or changes that were made throughout the growing season came to a head at once. The team wouldn’t know where the inventory was in the greenhouse which slowed the pulling process. Changes to carts were tracked manually so even the smallest mistake could kick off a cascading effect of inaccurate information that would take hours or days to fix.

Inventory is the lynchpin to the business. If you don’t know what you have, when it’s ready, and where it is in the greenhouse, you waste a lot of time.

Ryan Horn
Owner

The Solution

Real-Time Inventory Management with Plant Partner ERP

As GDF expanded and their growing needs became more complex, the team realized that to succeed they needed to get their inventory under control.

Aligning Production and Sales

To begin, the team at Plant Partner helped GDF streamline operations by addressing the disconnect between production and sales. Historically, this misalignment led to overproduction, underproduction, and miscommunications that impacted the bottom line.

The solution was to assign a unique SKU to every plant variety and size at the seeding stage. This meant that as plants moved from germination trays to growth areas, and eventually to shipping bays, they were consistently tracked against actual sales orders and forecasts. This gave everyone at GDF a real-time view into crop performance so they could identify issues early and proactively make adjustments.

Plant Partner gave our production and sales teams the data they needed to finally get into alignment.

Heather DeVillie
Production Manager

Investing in Personnel and Training

With Plant Partner’s guidance, GDF allocated full-time inventory personnel to monitor the flow of plants through their lifecycle, from seed to sale. These team members became the farm’s eyes and ears, ensuring that the data within Plant Partner accurately reflected the physical inventory. They were trained extensively in the software and became critical to identify and correct any discrepancies in real time. Their roles underscored the farm’s commitment to accuracy and efficiency, turning inventory management from a liability into a strategic asset. The payback that GDF experienced has proven well worth the investment.

The Plant Partner team is always on hand to answer our questions and help us figure out a problem. That’s why we’ve been a customer for over 30 years.

Heather DeVillie
Production Manager

Streamlining Cart Verification and Order Fulfillment

Plant Partner also helped GDF implement a cart verification system. The process involved tagging each cart with a unique barcode that corresponded to an order in the Plant Partner system. As carts were loaded, a team member would scan each shelf, and the system would immediately flag any discrepancies between the physical cart and the digital order. This drastically reduced errors, and saved the team countless hours previously spent manually verifying orders.

Order writers have confidence in the numbers, team leads don’t have to wait for the office to make a decision, and the office doesn’t have to make constant system adjustments.

Ryan Horn
Owner