Greenhouse operations have never had more data at their fingertips. From sales orders and inventory levels to production schedules and shipping commitments, growers have access to a wealth of information that can help drive smarter decisions. Yet for many organizations, finding answers still means running reports, exporting spreadsheets, and manually piecing together information from multiple…
For greenhouse growers, the window of opportunity is highly variable. The weather, pests, soil conditions, water availability, supply chain partners, customer demand, and workforce resources all impact how much you can grow and how much you can sell. That window is also short, particularly in northern climates. Everyone wants to buy flowers, plants, shrubs, and…
Greenhouse owners face unique operational challenges. To start, they manage living inventory with a limited shelf life. This requires precise timing as to when to start growing flowers, shrubs, and trees—and when to move them out of production to become available. Getting this right allows deliveries to reach customers at the right time so they…
If your greenhouse business misses out on revenue opportunities or experiences workflow delays, the cause could be poor analytics. Common signs that analytics do not provide the required insights include challenges in planning resources and inconsistent information as data flows from one team to another in the production lifecycle. The cause is usually isolated data…
“You can’t improve what you don’t measure,” Peter Drucker – world-renowned management consultant and author of The Practice of Management Drucker’s wisdom certainly rings true for greenhouse growers. The fast pace of the growing and selling seasons—along with data isolated in different applications and inside someone’s brain—sometimes makes it impossible to access KPIs (key performance…
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…
Matching production to customer demand is perhaps more critical to greenhouse growers than any other industry. Growing and selling seasons are relatively short, and flowers, shrubs, and trees can’t sit on the shelf forever. If you don’t forecast production correctly and match it to customer demand, you either lose out on sales or end up…