Nursery production management system delivers 25% growth

Hillier Nurseries, established in 1864, is Britain's largest grower of shrubs and trees, with its Ampfield site growing about five million shrubs each year, mainly outside but many in a huge greenhouses covering five acres. Meanwhile, a million trees are growing on farmland near Liss. Following success with IT consultancy Thinkers on a new, barcode scanners and touchscreen-based computerised till and inventory management system, Hillier called the team back to replace its ancient production management and accounting systems. Hillier makes the point that its production is unlike most of the rest of manufacturing industry: tree and shrub producers tend to be small businesses that focus on, say, lavenders, its spokesperson explains. Additionally, trees present another inventory management problem, given that they keep growing – making stock control a rather more dynamic business than is the case for most manufacturers. Although the firm knew that getting an off-the-shelf system wasn't going to be trivial, it di its analysis and appointed Priority ERP software firm eMerge IT, based in Chandlers Ford. Thinkers planned and led the project that saw the first phase of the system go live in just 15 weeks to meet Hillier's deadline of the financial year. Subsequent phases have gone live to coincide with the peaks of the busy season for the different divisions – spring for the shrub division and winter for the tree division. In the first year of operation, just completed, the shrub division saw a 25% increase in business, which the firm says would have been impossible to manage on the old system. And the system is also now being used to manage the supply of trees to high-profile landscaping projects, including the velodrome being built for the Commonwealth games in Glasgow, and more than 4,000 semi-mature trees being planted in the Olympic Park for London 2012.