Fairview Greenhouse is a regional nursery in Carthage, Missouri that sells potted plants – mums, poinsettias, lilies – to large retail chain stores in the central US. The company delivers 20 to 50 truckloads a week, climbing to 175 per week during the holiday season. Fairview recently purchased the fully integrated Prophesy LoadBuilder and Dispatch solution to handle all its delivery needs.

According to Royce Nelson, Fairview’s Transportation Manager, it was “Prophesy’s fully integrated software that was the most important advantage” to him. Once information is entered into Fairview’s existing enterprise software, Nelson explained, the information flows smoothly into Prophesy’s logistics software and never has to be entered again.

Fairview was facing serious logistical challenges. Its major customer required holiday deliveries of thousands of orders, within three days of purchase, to hundreds of stores in 10 states. The blooming plants, Nelson said, only have a weeklong shelf life. In addition, after spending 40 hours using databases and spreadsheets to figure out what goes on each truck, a certain plant variety wouldn’t be ready to ship. Facing tight deadlines, Fairview had to waste labor hours re-shuffling trucks and send them out partially empty.

With Prophesy, Fairview expects to eliminate these problems. Given that he can re-build truckloads in minutes if plants are not ready, Nelson can send out fewer trucks. “That saves me $2500 per truck,” he emphasized. According to Nelson, “We estimate paying for the Prophesy solution in less than a year.”

The Transportation Manager appreciates the smooth integration between load building and dispatch. “The Dispatch piece gives us tighter controls and some really nice reports to show how things stand,” Nelson pointed out. He added, “The features are very user friendly, and information flows well.”