Industry
What is an availability, and name at least 4 points of information commonly found on it
Availability is how horticulture businesses (primarily wholesalers) let their potential customers know what inventory they have in stock.
Information commonly found on it include: common name, botanical name, size, price, qty available, notes, descriptions, photos, projected future availability, and more
Name 3 customers and something about each
Sampson, Samson, Forest Lake, May Nursery, Bartons, Sandhill Native Growers, Palm City Tree Farms, Old Courthouse, Currin's, Dunford, Chrishaven, Etera, Hughes & Hughes, Generation Growers, Chehalem Mountain, Windcrest,Verdant, etc.
Name the 5 main modules of Plantiful and what they do at a high level
Production, Sales, Logistics, Catalog, Procurement. Production tracks specific physical inventory. Sales tracks customers and their orders.Build and manage trucks via logistics. Manage availability via the catalog. Manage vendors and purchase orders via procurement
Describe some challenges you’ll face if your availability is not up to date?
You’ll be slower to answer sales inquiries, you may accidentally offer customers product that isn’t available or stop yourself from selling something that is available, you may pull the wrong crop for sales which leads to inventory waste.
Name 2 of the major upcoming projects on the roadmap
Cost tracking, offline mode, reporting, POS
Name two of our biggest competitors and how we differ from them
SBI, Picas, eGrow, GrowFlo, PlantX, etc…Some of these are regional, focused on a different ICP, have fewer features, or some combination of these. All are older & less user friendly & usually pricier
Describe a typical ICP business we work with in terms of what they grow, who they sell to, and their general size
Wholesale grower, selling to landscapers and IGCs, 2 - 10 office staff, $500K - $5M+ in sales
Name 3 of the printouts you can make from sales and what they’re used for
Quotes (for customer inquiries), confirmation (to let customer's know their order is confirmed), invoice (to bill customers), BoL (for truck drivers), status update (to let customers know what's been shipped), shipping label (for the loading team to know what items are going where)
Name at least 1 core value of having a full activity history on production
Better planning for next year, understanding why plant loss happens, being able to track your team’s work, being able to see what’s happened recently at the nursery
Explain what a POS system is and why it will be important to our business
A retail checkout system integrated with a credit card swiper. This will enable us to sell to retail nurseries & allow us to capture card present transactions.
When a lead describes a shift, what might they be referring to
Potting up plant material as it grows. Typically done from plug trays to 1G or 3G, and again into larger sizes 3G → 10G, etc. This increases the value of plants but is a labor intensive process
What solution do the majority of our customers use today?
QB + spreadsheets
Describe how the integration between Plantiful and QB works at a high level
Operates on both QBD and QBO. Invoices and invoice payments copy from Plantiful to QB. Customers sync bi-directionally. POs and vendors will sync (WIP)
Describe how a customer typically makes availability before using Plantiful
They send employee(s) to physically check inventory with pen & paper, transcribe it into a spreadsheet back at the office, cross-reference against sales orders to account for reservations, and manually upload to their site
Name the two most recently launched projects on our roadmap
Payments & Procurement
Name the three types of tree growers
B&B, Bareroot, container. B&B nurseries grow trees in the ground directly and wrap the root ball into a burlap sack when digging it up for sale. They typically measure trees by height or caliper. Container growers put the trees in containers or boxes (18” box, 24” box, 30G, 45G, etc). Bareroot growers are rarer and put the trees directly in the ground and don’t wrap them for sale
Why do customers need special packing slips or bills of lading for their trucks?
Nursery shields with gov agencies to cross state lines with Ag products. Also do their own trucking b/c of nuances of live plant inventory
Explain a few of the different qty columns in the catalog, the nuances between them, and why they are helpful to businesses compared to a QB inventory #
Planned, in production, ready, ready reserved, available, needs allocation, total inventory.
We can tell the difference between plants that are on order but not here, here but not sellable, here and sellable and available, here but reserved for sale, and sold but not here. QB can only give 1 number, which fails to account for all the nuance and forces people to track on spreadsheets outside the system.
Describe at least 3 ways Plantiful can help make your nursery more profitable
(1) Streamline labor costs on availability, (2) shorten sales response times with availability and easy-to-use sales orders, (3) Reduced missed sales opportunity (4) streamline production management with tasks, (5) improve future planning quality with full activity histories, (6) reduce plant loss from fewer mistakes in production & fulfillment, (7) open new revenue channels via online ordering, (8) Reduce payment fees; (9) Getting paid faster
What is one of the largest long-term potential product expansion opportunities for Plantiful, and why?
B2B Marketplace (new rev stream, transform the industry supply chain, find new customers for our ICPs), Sell internationally (huge expansion in selling opportunities), sell to landscapers (huge expansion in selling opportunities)
Name at least 3 names for young plants or their containers
Plug, liner, Flat, Cell Tray, (also kind of acceptable - cutting, URC)
Name at least 2 types of horticultural businesses that we do not consider ICP today and why
Retail nurseries b/c POS, cut flowers growers b/c bouquet problem, bedding plant growers b/c of the bouquet problem, grafting plant growers b/c of no grafting workflow, enterprise (big box) nurseries b/c EDI, young plant brokering b/c EDI
Explain at least 1 way a business can utilize QR codes within Plantiful
You can make a QR code of any view to quickly pull up production by location, availability, or other common views. You can make a QR code of a production item to easily pull up information about the crop out in the field and make quick changes.
When a new sales order for delivery is made, name at least 3 processes that need to be updated and for what reasons. What team members need to be notified and why
Inventory/sales to update availability, production to have a pick/pull sheet, logistics to make a truckload & BoL, sales to make an order confirmation, accounting to make an invoice
How will EDI change our business?
Enable us to sell to big box retailers