Overview

Our consultants can help your organization with operational and technical changes to improve your efficiencies and results.

Our consultant’s deep industry experience coupled with modern analytical and operational tools can help realize greater value in your business.

Our consultants can help you assess, revise, and improve your strategic and tactical direction and operating results. 

Some of our capabilities include:

• Grower Strategy Assessment and Grower Strategic Planning
• Grower M&A Analysis and modeling
• Grower Operational KPI Analysis
• Grower Management Processes
• Executive Coaching and Development
• Grower Organizational Development
• Retail Sales Planning
• Forecasting and Forecasting Strategy
• Pay By Scan / Vendor Managed Inventory Strategy
• Product Pricing and Costing
• Operational Efficiencies
• Grower IT Systems Assessments
• Data, Analytics, and Reporting Automation Assessments
• Pay by Scan / Vendor Managed Inventory
• Big Box planning and pricing
• Analyze, establish and maintain best practices for systems, data and processes
• Assess risk and provide insight to IT systems
• Document your business processes and practices to help with training and onboarding of new employees and mitigate the risk of loss of key employees
• Model strategies for shifting market demands and to deliver the right product to the right customer at the right price
• Devise strategies to tackle operational and supply chain difficulties
• Business process design to improve operational flow, creating value
• Develop and improve pricing and costing strategies
• Product data and portfolio management review and process improvement
• Data automation design and planning
• In depth involvement from front office to back office to production lines, helping the grower build an end-to-end supply chain and achieve vision
• Consulting on software system purchases, planning, and return on investment considerations

We offer flexible engagements to meet your needs.

Consulting Products

Strategic Consulting for Growers

Our strategic assessment and planning products offer an in-depth guided process to assess, evaluate, and define or refine your corporate strategy and help define plans to achieve your goals and objectives.

• Most executives spend less than 20% of their time on corporate strategy. The demands of running a business turn us into firemen and firewomen.
• A business leader should be spending 50% of their time thinking about and executing their strategic plan
• A third-party observer can often see things we cannot and help keep the team members on task when the demands of day to day business pull you away

Strategic Assessment Engagement

The AGS Strategic Assessment engagement is an organizational assessment to evaluate and measure current strategy or lack thereof, organizational alignment, and high-level communication efficiencies.  

A full management report of findings and an analysis of identified themes and recommended improvements and actions is provided.

This engagement is a precursor to the full strategic plan creation and training engagement below.

Click here to learn more.

Strategic Plan Creation and Training Engagement

The AGS Strategic Plan Creation and Training engagement is working directly with the organization through a series of guided meetings and exercises to create and train regarding the corporate strategic direction.

The key strategic plan artifacts are development and include Vision, Mission, Strategic Objectives, Key result areas, and Key Metrics.

We also help implement a ‘system for managing’, and clarify important ongoing meetings, additional metrics needs, and staff roles and responsibilities for better decision making.

Click here to learn more.

Grower Merger & Acquisition Consulting Packages

Pre-Sale Operational Assessment – Sell Side

The AGS Pre-Sale Operational Assessment is a grower centric examination of the business. We will visit the facilities and perform a series of interviews, on-site walk-throughs, and discussions of key seller goals, customers, markets, financials, and internal processes and facilities review.

Using this data and the results from interviews/surveys etc. we will assess and provide a report with our findings, and a list of recommendations for improvements to achieve seller objectives.

Click here to learn more.

Pre-Sale Operational Assessment – Buyer Side

The AGS team works with the potential buyer to help assess a target acquisition. If possible, we visit the target location, perform a series of interviews, and conduct on-site walk throughs to assess facilities and inventory. Further, we hold discussions with management of key customers, markets and internal processes, financials, and facilities.

Using this data and the results from the on-site review we analyze and provide a report with our findings, and a list of recommendations for improvements to achieve buyer objectives.

Click here to learn more.

Grower Operations Consulting Packages

Grower Fractional CEO Advisor

Our consultants have been in your place and can ask insightful questions and provide objective, experienced based guidance, and feedback from a wide range of operation types and scenarios to help you work through problems and achieve your objectives.

This is meant for new or experienced owners or a newly tapped leader who would like to have an experienced executive leader to work with, get advice, analyze issues, and generally have a trusted advisor “go to” for help with working through plans, challenges, and opportunities.

Sales Forecast Creation

“A grower without a forecasting process is flying blind, without instrument backup”

We combine the Forecasting expertise of our collaboration partner Ken Lane from Hathaway and Lane with the data analytic and grower operations experience of the AGS team for a powerful forecasting engagement.

Our team will perform a data analysis of your operation and build out a 3-year rolling forecast, with collaboration from the grower.

We consider the grower’s historical performance, other macroeconomic factors, customers, market, and the grower’s own plans and knowledge.

The forecast is a rolling 3-year forecast (at the SKU level) to help them drive toward the desired plan and goals, product mix, and customers.

Click here to learn more.

Product Mix/Pricing Planning

Many growers struggle with culling unproductive items from their SKU list and migrating their product mix and offerings toward growth.

We help growers use and view their data to build out analytics to assess product mix and help drive YOY changes and improvements.

Item Costing Assessment and Analysis

Many growers struggle with accurate, repeatable, and automated item costing.

This is usually a big data problem where we can help them arrange and clean their data, build methods for them to build item costing (with allocations), and use that for more informed pricing and profitability analysis.

Operational Efficiency Assessment and Plan

Many growers don’t track key metrics to measure important metrics for production, crop maintenance, or pulling and shipping.

We can help assess a grower’s detailed situation, and recommend key metrics, process improvements, and data required to drive those measurements and improvements.

Merchandising Assessment and Plan

Growers who self-merchandise don’t always have good metrics tracking for their in-store activities, budget adherence, and efficient processes, procedures, and product decisions (like plan-o-gram, scrap/shrink decisions, and plant maintenance best practices).

We can help with assessing the current situation and providing findings, recommendations, and store visits for follow-up.

Operational Procurement Assessment

Many growers struggle with sourcing raw materials. And may pay more than they need to for key supplies.

We can help assess the current situation and provide findings and recommendations for improving raw material sourcing and working toward a more optimal cost scenario.

Operational Production Planning Assessment

Many growers don’t track key metrics to measure important metrics for production planning.

We can help assess a grower’s detailed situation, and recommend key metrics, process improvements, and data required to drive those measurements and improvements.

Operational Shipping Efficiency Assessment / Planning

Many growers don’t track key metrics to measure important metrics for pulling and shipping.

We can help assess a grower’s detailed situation, recommend key metrics, process improvements, and data required to drive those measurements and improvements for the logistics of shipping.

Marketing Assessment and Plan

We can help growers execute their marketing plan with the implementation of social media, email marketing, and other aspects of a marketing plan.

Learn more here.

Grower IT and Data Systems Consulting Packages

Grower IT Systems Assessment

A Grower’s IT and Data systems are a crucial part of a grower’s operations.

Too many times a grower is not fully aware of the state, needs, or risks of their IT and data systems.

In this engagement, our team will perform an assessment of a grower’s IT systems, personnel, key data sources and flows, tools, suppliers, and issues.

We provide management with a detailed report with findings and recommended projects for improvements and changes. We also do a full final review of key recommendations.

Knowing where your data resides, how it flows, and its security state is crucial for planning and execution. It improves communication and understanding. It sets the stage for the alignment of future technology projects.

Through a tech assessment, we can help you build a plan for updates, improvements, and changes to align your business needs with the key systems that support your business.

Learn more here.

Fractional CIO Advisor

Could your operation use a 3^rd party objective source to have technology discussions and review plans and help guide implementations?

Our consultants ask insightful questions and provide objective, experienced based guidance, and feedback from a wide range of operation types and scenarios to help you work through IT system setup, challenges, problems, and work to achieve your objectives.

Provide a defined, experienced resource to help grower staff run, maintain, plan, identify, and address issues and strategize for improvements in their IT and data areas.

Grower Data and Report Automation Assessment

Many growers don’t have the reports, dashboards, and operational data analytics they need to really ‘see’ their business and make the best decisions.

Other growers have too many reports that require extensive staff hours to re-generate every week, or month.

We can assess a grower’s reporting and data situation and create a recommended plan to improve reporting coverage, build out key metric calculations, and provide an automation plan.

Special IT Projects

The AGS team can do special projects to help existing systems work better and integrate or automate manual processes.

The AGS team has years of experience helping growers of all sizes optimize their businesses.

We understand the unique needs of greenhouse and nursery growers and have the expertise to create custom solutions to improve your grower businesses.

Some types of projects we have done for growers in the past:

• Data and Report Automation
• Integrating systems
• Data Validation
• ERP system automations
• Costing Automations
• Analysis, Key Metric calculations
• Staff notification automation
• many more…

View some of the special projects our team has completed for growers like you here.

Find Out More

Contact us today to learn more about how our consultants can help you improve your operation.