Coordination of resources is still one of the most challenging aspects of managing a grower operation. Getting the right people in the right place for the right job at the right time is a difficult task even with all the modern productivity improvements we have available.

This is especially true for large deliveries of plant material to retail or wholesale customers. The customer or store location needs to know what’s coming, which order it pertains to, when it will arrive and the personnel required to manage, unload, merchandise, etc. need to be aware of the schedule. This coordinated activity can ensure the best product is available for the end consumers.

Needed communication workflow for coordination notifications
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That’s all easy to say but really hard to accomplish. Many growers and their customers have a variety of systems that would need to be used to coordinate this activity.

Know What’s Planned To Ship

Grower systems need to provide a view of planned orders. This would be crucial to know what is shipping, the logistics demand on the grower’s business, and the resources required on the customer side to receive and merchandise the product. Growers should have at least a next week view showing upcoming replenishment orders and other ad-hoc orders. This report should show the volume of the product, the location, the customer, and any other key grower specific parameters.

Infer The Resources Needed

This information from the planning report, when combined with rules of thumb heuristics for you operation such as number of racks per merchandiser, number of racks per shipment or truck and other key metrics that communicate the volume or amount of work in language and units that are applicable to the context.

Example data correlating hours in store to racks delivered
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Your reporting system can work to supply these inferred values so that your staff can know what resources need to be applied.

When customers and or merchandisers know what products are coming and how much effort it will take the resources can then be more accurately planned for.

Inform The Customer Personnel And Or Merchandising Teams

Once you have the relevant data reports for the plan and the resources then the next step is to do the notifications. Your system should allow you to link a store with one or more persons for notifications.

A notification should include the relevant details such as date, store or customer address, amount of material (or order information as relevant) and any other key information that the coordination needs.

Example rolling 3 day delivery schedule with volume
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This information needs to be sent to the key personnel in a timely manner at least daily in peak season and maybe 2x per day (morning and evening) in case of last minute order changes.

Additionally, key customers or store personnel may want to know what’s coming. Try to make customer communication as clear and concise as possible. Most of the bigger customers have a lot coming at them so the communication needs to be quick, concise, and clear.

Example customer notification
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Automate It

For many growers they sell to repeat customers over and over, especially those for the local and regional garden centers and retail outlets. For those cases and maybe for all your customers automation the key. That way you don’t have to worry about remembering and no staff is tied up building the reports and sending the notifications.

Fully functional notification system for a grower
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Expected Results

When the right resources are available at the right time for customer, grower, and merchandiser the grower can save thousands in labor costs per year and help ensure that the product flows through the receiving and preparation for sale in the most efficient manner. This helps both customers and growers to improve costs and sales.

Advanced Grower Solutions has built several of these types of notification systems for clients and we can help you ascertain what would work best for your systems and customers. Contact Us today and we can start the discussion on your road to coordination improvements.