How New Greenhouse Software Systems Can Help Your Business From Front to Back
March 21, 2019 Software suppliers have developed new tools to help greenhouse growers manage inventory, fill orders quickly, and monitor your crops from production to distribution. Here’s a closer look at some of their latest offerings.
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Business Intelligence Analytics (SBI)
Business Intelligence from SBI enables human decisions and actions based on facts. It helps make your operation visible for all aspects of your business and exposes key metrics to your management teams.
Technical Details:
• Sales history comparison with drill down/open orders and catalog inventory information
• Inventory detail and availability/production schedule and shipping forecasts
• Customers and vendors/purchasing requirements
• Schedule any report to send as PDF, PNG, or Excel files
• Send in app notifications to merchandisers, replenishment teams
• Drill down reporting turns one report into five reports
• Standard and custom dashboards are available for exporting reports and sharing reports
• Reporting sets designed for suppliers, manufacturers, brokers, and buyers of big retail
• Custom sales, financial, and operational reports
Online Orders Module (SBI Software)
The Online Orders Module from SBI gives your customers the ability to place orders online without having to modify your existing website. You can highlight important product details like catalog information, plant qualities, or photos. You can also filter results or search to easily find products. Capture orders after hours otherwise lost by not being available.
Technical Details:
• Orders entered by your customers are automatically entered into Triumph Back Office.
• Manage what available quantities customers see based on the availability template they are assigned.
• Control what quantities customers receive by allocating the order after it has been placed online.
• Promote hot list photos on the site along with catalog photos.
• Use many different configuration options or templates for the look and feel of the site.
• Receive instant notification of new orders in the system via email or when you log into Triumph.
• Your customers can search your plant library by all plant properties.
• Fully integrated for live pricing, ship date rules, and ship increments.
• All availability and all photos are live on the site.
• Optimized for visibility on any smartphone or mobile device.
• Customers may also export live availability as an Excel or PDF form to make orders with.
Mobile Inventory Control (SBI Software)
Mobile Inventory Control allows you to manage your inventory from anywhere. It runs on any smart device and can sync records quickly.
ET Grow (Extreme Technology)
ET Grow is a simple, yet sophisticated ERP software solution designed to support all parts of the business. Allowing users to access, view, and update their daily operations on the go, ET Grow works with businesses from seed to sale.
The latest features of ET Grow include:
• MRP Functionality — Enter your suppliers, the products you buy from them, at the prices you negotiated. Quickly identify which suppliers are the most affordable to save money, or which supplier can ship the fastest to solve an issue quickly. Keep everyone in the loop on what products have been ordered, shipped, and received.
• Labeling — Labels can take a lot of time, and in some cases, a lot of money by the big box stores. Easily manage your labels and edit the way they look. Print on the go from any computer at any time. Meet your customers’ needs and stay organized.
• Space Utilization — List and graph views make it easy to quickly see where you have open space to plant additional product and avoid wasted space. Quickly see where you are at capacity, so you do not over commit and end up wasting product.
• CRM Functionality Enter your customers and details about their account and the products that you sell to them at the prices you negotiated. Quickly identify which customers pay the most to maximize your margins, or which customers buy the most to solve an inventory issue quickly. Keep everyone in the loop on what customers are buying and what products they are ordering. Track additional information such as special dates, agreements, or any account details, so that any one of your team members can jump in where necessary.
• Full Traceability — Enter your crops immediately once received, and track everything that is done to them. ET Grow allows you to split, merge, and change stages of your crops, tracking each action so you can trace back to where your crops originated.
Picas Mobile (Integrated Software Solutions)
Picas Mobile offers simple yet powerful apps that allow growers to work anywhere. The tools include a Data Collection App (physical counts, ready date, moves, etc), Production App, Driver App, Labor Tracking App, and a Merchandizer App. These apps are all native for iOS and Android, with responsive designs to work on phones and tablets. Apps are hosted on premise and can be deployed through Google Play and the App Store.
Picas Labor Tracking (Integrated Software Solutions)
The Picas Labor Tracking Module integrates with any of your planting lines (including the ISO and Visser sticking robots). This module allows you to track hours against job functions, cost centers, and departments. It also gives managers the option to incentivize employees through productivity bonuses with the ability to make decisions on future labor needs based on past productivity levels and future quantity requirements. The module provides an overall analysis of labor cost, cost per unit, quantity per hour, overtime, and more. It is a tool that can also be used by growers to evaluate their Lean Continuous Improvement initiatives (before and after data).
Picas Business Intelligence (Integrated Software Solutions)
In most cases, the data that you capture on a regular basis has a story to tell. Though columnar reports have their place, they make it harder to capture the story in this format. When looking for trends or spikes, Business Intelligence dashboards are much easier to consume, and their visuals make it easier to see the story your data is trying to tell. Dashboards can be built against any sets of data, from labor to production and sales. These dashboards can come in multiple styles (flat, table, visual, chart, grid, etc).
Visser Autostix Panel (Integrated Software Solutions)
This panel is an add-on to the Picas Sticking Line. It also works in conjunction with the transplant planning tools so that you can schedule what varieties will be planted on the Visser line. This panel takes advantage of in-line photo-eyes that, once tripped, will verify each of the varieties that have been set in each of the Visser stations. This data can be fed directly to the Picas Labor Tracking module where you can get metrics on how this robot sticks compared to other robots or your manual sticking crews. This panel also interfaces with a print-and-apply device so that your labels can be printed and applied vs labeling each tray manually.
Microsoft Dynamics NAV/Agriware (Velosio)
Microsoft Dynamics NAV and Agriware provide a comprehensive enterprise resource management system designed specifically for growers’ sales, production, supply chain, and distribution needs. Combined with Velosio’s industry experience, this scalable business solution and service helps growers enhance operations, better understand profitability, maximize space utilization, and gain end-to-end management of sales and operations to drive growth through:
• Production planning to calculate when actions are required and materials need to be available, and by when.
• Availability tools so sales know what they can sell and when in real-time
• Labor planning for insights into past, present, and future labor needs
• A graphical overview of space needs based on both historical and real-time data to make adjustments for short-term and long-term benefits
• Advanced analytics and performance indicators for the ability to be proactive versus reactive
• Comprehensive financial modules for accurate invoicing and receivables management
• Product costing to determine which plants are the most profitable
• Tools for teams to work collaboratively and achieve goals through Microsoft Productivity landscape
• Advanced Racking system to maximize cart space and Truck loads.
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