Insights on Smart Adoption of AI Tools in Floriculture Operations
February 19, 2026 Editor’s Note: In this article, Alan Brown, Managing Director of Grow Flo, shares his insights with Greenhouse Grower Editor Brian Sparks on innovations in software development and AI capabilities.
Brian Sparks: How is artificial intelligence impacting how you develop software-based technology for the floriculture market, and how can growers use it in their own operations?
Alan Brown: There’s been a big push for companies to adopt AI, and while I agree it’s important, I also think we need to temper our expectations because there are some caveats to how successful we can be with it. It starts with reliable data outputs. AI is great for doing basic things like writing content for documents, and when you give it enough prompts over time, it will remember things and will hopefully give you information that’s relevant to your world. But you can’t rely on it completely; you have to have a human checking over the information it gives you. There are also benefits in terms of streamlining your internal processes, and when I look at how we can benefit from it using the various applications that we use in our business, I look at enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems. If we’re going to bring AI into our report writing and building, we have to make sure the information is correct, especially if we’re turning that information over to other members of our team. Otherwise you run the risk of deploying something that’s invalid. But in the short term, the biggest benefit to our grower customers comes when they can just go into the reporting tool and interact with it very easily.
Sparks: When you are approached by growers who may be uncertain about how they can best adopt AI or new software tools, what does that conversation look like?
Brown: Part of the challenge is that we have customers coming to us who have used a broad range of software applications. The way they work is very straightforward. Then you have customers who come with reasonably modern applications, but are looking for better ways to use them. They might want to produce data in a slightly different way, or they may want to make some of the functionality more mobile friendly. Those are great conversations, because we don’t want growers to be limited to a laptop. We want them to be able to walk around the greenhouse with phones and collect information exactly when they need it. We see too many cases of growers walking around the nursery collecting information on paper, and bringing it back to the office to punch it into an antiquated piece of software that may or not be backed up. You can really improve time management and efficiency when you give your team the ability to process plant orders as they’re walking around the facility, and feed that information back into the ERP system in real time. By the time you get back to the office, you’re not having to punch anything in. It’s those types of things where I think we’re looking for people to have a slightly open mind, because we want them to be open to thinking that maybe there’s another way of doing things. Our technology actually evolved from looking at those older network-based applications that were slowly dying out because there wasn’t the investment put into moving them to the cloud. There was a desire for change and people thinking they should do things differently. We’re all about trying to make things as efficient as possible and improve time savings for our customers.
With today’s labor shortage, when you can minimize the number of individual tasks needed to get from A to Z, you can use your team more effectively throughout the rest of the nursery.
We’re also currently building a delivery driver app. A lot of our customers ship on their own trucks or use third-party haulers on their own trucks, and the app would allow the driver to jump in the cab, see his route, and map out the best route possible. When he pulls up, he can offload the plants, record any damage, and take a photograph of the shipment being delivered, the customer can sign for it. It’s all delivered back to the ERP system in real time.
Sparks: Are there other pain points and challenges that we haven’t talked about that you’ve heard about when talking to some of your customers?
Brown: It’s really all about improving efficiencies. Labor shortages are a big problem, and we’re aiming to provide software that can help save on labor or minimize concerns when someone from your team leaves. If you currently have four people doing one job, could you reduce that to one or two people?
Sparks: As you look to the future, what excites you the most about this particular segment of the industry that you’re involved in?
Brown: I think embracing technology is really important. Our business started in the UK and we took it over to the U.S. a few years ago. The majority of the growers that we work with have family-run businesses, and there’s a lot of younger people coming into them with new ideas. They might look at a process and wonder why we’re still doing it that way. This next generation doesn’t want to use an old software system. They’re used to looking at modern web interfaces, and the standard is now higher because of this new blood coming in to the industry. What excites me is all that energy coming in, and the desire to improve things.
Learn more about AI innovation in greenhouse software here.
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