Efficiency. If your business wasn’t all about efficiency before, the events of the last several months, and the current state of the economy, have probably pushed you all-in on efficiency.
Think about it. Your costs are increasing on all sides, you’re likely still in a manpower squeeze, and your customers aren’t slacking off a bit in what they’re demanding from you.
Because of all this, the big-money question still looms large: How do you do more with less?
The answer – maybe not the only answer, but the best answer – is technology.
Hey, we understand your reticence toward technological doodads. We’ve seen it first-hand over the last several years, enough to know where it comes from and what it’s all about.
However, the horticulture businesses that are navigating best through the current economy are using technology to guide them.
Obviously, Arbré Technologies is all about using RFID technology to improve the efficiency of horticulture businesses. But here’s what that really means in terms of the business challenges you may be facing.
RFID technology helps you do more with fewer people.
The more you know about your inventory, the more successful your business can be. Knowing counts of plants as well as where they are in the growing cycle is vital to business performance.
With an appropriately implemented RFID system, one person can easily gather all the inventory data for your operation by taking a scanner up and down rows – on foot or on a golf cart or ATV.
If you could get a detailed inventory count by having one person ride a golf cart up and down the rows of your operation, and you could have that data available to all your programs and planning cycles … that could potentially be a huge manpower savings for your operation.
Businesses that have implemented RFID technology report that it frees up three to four experienced people to do other work – and there’s never a shortage of jobs for experienced people to do around a horticulture business.
It’s results like these that lead Arbré Technologies to claim its software can pay for itself in a year or less.
RFID technology platforms can be implemented with minimal disruption to the way you already do business.
While implementation processes differ by vendors, Arbré Technologies works by looking at your business and seeing how RFID technology can be incorporated – not by trying to wedge in a one-size-fits-all platform that requires you to change around your entire operation.
Some RFID-based solutions sound like they might deliver efficiency improvements, but the front-end effort needed to implement the system is massive, painful, and expensive – in terms of time, money, and resources.
That’s why it’s important to ask a prospective RFID vendor whether its system requires you to change your business processes and platforms, or whether it can easily be structured to work within your existing business model with minimum disruption.
You should also ask whether a prospective vendor will help you identify “pain points” in your organization, because … well, let’s let the next bullet point explain more.
RFID technology can be implemented at multiple points in your operation – or just one or two.
One of the big plusses for RFID applications in horticulture is the technology’s flexibility.
RFID can help solve inventory-related problems on a broad scale, from seed to sale, or it can be used in a specific part of the operation.
Some horticulture businesses use RFID tagging specifically in the shipping portion of their operation, and then compare the data collected there to the inventory data they’ve collected through other means.
Businesses with wholesale and retail operations that need to be segregated, like Bluestone Perennials, use the data to make sure that wholesaled plants aren’t ending up in the retail operation, and vice versa.
However RFID data is used, it delivers efficiency by automating information collection and putting it in the right places in your business systems to allow for accurate counts all through the production cycle.
RFID supplies the data you need to make better decisions.
With all the disruptions of the last several years, sometimes it has to feel like you’ve been tiptoeing through a minefield.
Making decisions in this environment is crazy difficult, but the decisions need to be made – and the businesses that make the best decisions are going to thrive moving forward.
It’s not a hard-and-fast rule, but the better the quality of your data, the better the quality of your decisions.
There are many paths to high-quality data, but one of the best and most efficient is by using RFID technology to supply super-accurate data on inventory, sales, shipping, and status.
Knowing exactly what you have and where it is in your cycle can help you project future sales and inventory needs, especially when that data is combined with historical sales data.
If this is one of your efficiency goals, choosing Arbré Technologies as your RFID partner is smart because of Arbré’s experience with horticulture businesses of all types and sizes and its willingness to ask questions about your business, your data, and your long-term goals.
The result is a system that’s purpose-built to help you save costs, drive efficiency – and make better decisions.
Doing more with less has always been a crucial strategy for horticulture businesses. These days, it’s the strategy driving successful businesses.
If you’re feeling the need to drive additional efficiency in your business, consider RFID. It might be the battle-tested technology you need to drive the bottom-line results you demand.