Creekside Farming partners with Planergy to improve purchase & inventory efficiencies across their 40 locations and 30,000 acres
- Company Overview
Located in California, Creekside Farming Company was started in 2006. Currently generating over $5 million in revenue, Creekside Farming consists of 30,000 acres – growing and harvesting almonds, pistachios, walnuts, and citrus and stone fruits, such as plums, apricots, peaches and cherries. Batth Farms is their sister company.
- Why Planergy
Creekside Farming Company needed a solution to streamline purchases and inventory, control spend, integrate multiple budgets and gain a level of predictability, and optimize inventory management between its location and their sister location, Batth Farms.
Key Challenges
- No dedicated purchasing and procurement system
- No budgetary controls in place, leading to lack of spend predictability and forecasting
- Limited control over spend and lacking spend visibility
- Excel spreadsheets and QuickBooks used for reporting; needed advanced reporting to efficiently track inventory and trends to maximize purchases and savings
- Needed to streamline and automate invoice processing
Key Benefits
- A fully automated purchasing and procurement system serving both farms
- Real-time visibility into spend and purchase history
- Improved inventory and vendor management, resulting in cost-savings and improved vendor relationships
- Achieved smarter budgeting, improved fiscal control and forecasting
- Digitized and implemented a fast and accurate invoicing process, eliminating the need for spreadsheets
The Story
Customer
Multi-location farm and agribusiness
Key client
Accountant
Industry
Agriculture
Company Size
40+ employees
Before Planergy
Creekside Farming Company and Batth Farms are sister family run agribusiness companies. With 40 locations and 30,000 acres, both farms have an assigned staff member responsible for managing billing and accounting, creating opportunities for miscommunications, revenue losses, under or overspending, and lack of visibility into expenses.
“We needed to organize our ordering and spend for all purchases across parts/maintenance, fuel, and chemicals,” said Jorge Marquez, Accountant at Creekside Farming.
Creekside realized they needed solutions that provided a company-wide view for both the farming side, and the chemical and maintenance sides – the Planergy Spend Management platform incorporating Inventory Management Software and Purchasing Software were their go-to.
To empower effective decision-making, continue meeting market demands, and to build on opportunities to scale – both farms needed to automate processes, improve inventory traceability, purchasing control, forecasting and budgeting, spend visibility, and reporting on spend.
Jorge added, “At the time, we were producing reports using either QuickBooks or spreadsheets. And budget-wise, we wanted a much more granular view to divide our budgets into categories.”
After Planergy
Creekside Farming Company and Batth Farms teamed with Planergy to satisfy their need to streamline purchases and track inventory to ensure efficient business operations. The seamless installation of both Planergy modules proved to mitigate farms’ challenges.
With this level of access to automation, speed, agility, and efficiency, both farms are reaping the benefits of real-time inventory monitoring and tracking; cost-saving sourcing; increased spend visibility; controlled budgeting; and fast approval processes.
Advanced reporting and strategic forecasting were particularly useful features. “The historic data in Planergy allows us to budget accurately going forward.”
With about 4,000 invoices per year between the two farms, chemicals and maintenance parts being the two largest line items, Jorge explained why they made a huge investment in Planergy.
“We wanted more granular data, and to keep track of the products we ordered, how much we spent, and any credits from returns.”
He follows up with, “The biggest benefit has been the reporting features and leveraging that information to calculate savings.”
Testimonial
Planergy is flexible, adaptable, I love the reporting, and any problems I have encountered the support team fixed instantly.
Ruby Hunsaker
Creekside Farming
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