How Sexton Farms Improved Their Process by Getting Their Data Faster and Saving Time
Established in 1960, Sexton’s Christmas Tree Farm is a family-owned business located in Northwestern North Carolina. They started as a Christmas Tree grower that eventually got into growing pumpkins as well. As their company grew, their needs changed and became more complex.
They eventually became a supplier with large, big box retailers as a VMI (Vendor Managed Inventory) also known as pay by scan vendor. In order to manage their inventory in the store, they needed to ship, receive sales, review the sell thru’s, then replenish. They put inventory in the stores, watched their sales, and then when inventory got low, they deliver more.
What Challenges/Problems Necessitated A Change?
They needed real time sales data coming in to fulfill correctly. If information is half a day late, it could cost them their market. Christmas trees are extremely valuable until December 24th. It is critical the sales data gets to them asap.
Before using AGS’s Direct To Store product (DTS), every morning between 3:30 – 4:00 am someone at Sexton Farms had to wake up to print individual pieces of paper for each store to view the purchase orders they had to fulfill for the day. If they had 125 stores, someone had to click print, then go back to go to the next one and print again until they finished individually printing all 125.
The printed papers only showed the store number, so then someone had to compile the purchase orders in a grouping for the market. They would put the information in a spreadsheet and use pivot tables, but it was very time consuming. As they grew, they had so much data, it was difficult to analyze the data quickly. They were looking for a better way to get their hands on the information faster.
What Did Sexton Farms do to Solve This?
That’s when Sexton Farms decided to use DTS. With DTS, Sexton Farms can now sleep in because the information they need is automatically downloaded into their system. The reports are available online in a realtime dashboard view with extensive filters, in order to review sales and manage store inventory so they can easily analyze their data and make smarter business decisions.
DTS gives them instantaneous access to all their purchase order data, available through a web-based portal where they can track their own sales and purchasing trends, plus offer actionable insights to make informed business decisions faster.
After their growing season is over, they look back at previous years, so if they believe next year will trend like 2013, they can see how that year trended and make decisions using the data. They love the ability to access it anytime and anywhere. They were astonished at how well it works. They love that they can personalize what different users view.
What Feature Of DTS And GrowerEDI Was Most Appealing?
They like that they get data in real time. In addition to DTS, prior to shipping pumpkins in fall 2021, Sextons added another AGS product, GrowerEDI. The GrowerEDI platform handles transferring of EDI documents back and forth between Sextons and their retail trading partners and provides the automation for data translation for DTS reporting.
GrowerEDI allowed Sextons to move off their current tool and operate as a Traditional EDI vendor. It is faster than ever to receive and find the information they are looking for. With a powerful platform there are no more problems getting the information fast enough or neatly enough for the next steps in their operation.
Robin Sexton said “Tisha (our rep) does not get frazzled; no problem is too large for her. She is very composed and wants to know what you need. A major part of continuing with AGS is Tisha. No matter how great the program is, if it were not for the excellent service she provides, I would have moved to somewhere else. We need a person; I don’t need to push 1 for this etc. We are on a short window with Christmas trees.”
“When we need assistance, we need it now. Our livelihood is those few weeks. We onboarded in only two months, right before our busy season. Tisha did most of the work, she had me create an excel file with all the store numbers. Later, she taught me how to add new stores on my own. She made the process very easy.”
Robin continued “DTS is a fabulous tool. I am careful about my information online. I have worried with other online tools, but I have never worried about my information being compromised at AGS. DTS is an ultimate tool, I am a big proponent of this product.”
“We could not have grown without hiring lots of people and we only need help for two months pulling information at 3:30 am. If I had to do this again without it, I would retire!”
DTS is designed specifically for growers. It streamlines data flow from your store shelves and helps growers take control of their inventory. DTS helps grow customer relationships & opportunities through our integrations and real time reporting. It helps save time and make better decisions about your business, so you can spend more time growing your business.
GrowerEDI provides a knowledgeable, experienced data partner that can ease the EDI onboarding and integration process, improve data flows, automate interactions, and provide the data transformations to give you actionable, usable data.
Contact us to learn more or schedule a free demo.