Chief River Nursery Case Study
Chief River Nursery is a midwestern nursery ecommerce company that specializes in the sale of bare root trees, shrubs, and non-plant products to both homeowners who may only need a handful to agencies that need tens of thousands."The Equanimity team provided us with a great experience from start to finish with all aspects of this development. Their knowledgeable developers turned our wish list into a reality and delivered our software to us in a timely manner and within budget. It can be intimidating to go about having a custom piece of software built from scratch. With Equanimity, it was painless and actually a very fun process!"
Problem
Though already having an ecommerce inventory management software and order management system in place in two separate applications, Chief River Nursery didn't believe it would satisfy their future needs. With goals of continuing to expand the business by launching their sister company in 2024 and plans to construct new buildings to store plants and products, they knew they needed to invest in technology to not only upgrade their current system but also to build a solid foundation for future development.
Manage tens of thousands of orders containing several million tree and shrub seedlings in a short period of time
Coordinate 10,000+ orders to be shipped across the US with the need to arrive at the suitable planting time based on customer location
Monitor constant changing weather conditions, including snow cover and frost depth, to ensure shipment locations meet favorable planting conditions
Manage changing inventory of perishable products to ensure inventory is allocated correctly for future orders.
Filter massive amounts of orders and print large amounts of order packing slips at once based on selected filter criteria
Solution
Chief River Nursery did an excellent job of identifying pain points and painting a clear picture of what they wanted out of the new solution. Equanimity worked closely with their team to understand the challenges and desired features. The agreed upon recommended solution was to build a web application that encompassed all of the old features and newly desired features in one application. This web application was designed to be the cornerstone of their operational infrastructure, enabling seamless inventory and order management while laying a robust foundation for future growth and expansion.
A single, integrated web application that combines inventory management, an order fulfillment pipeline, printing, and more, eliminating the need for separate systems.
We designed and constructed a new database to increase data flow and migrated data from two separate applications to ensure data integrity and consistency.
The custom order fulfillment pipeline automates data integration from their ecommerce platform, upgrades with geolocation and UPS times, supports order management, and generates custom packing slips and order item labels.
We created custom APIs to integrate with on-site hardware and other software applications, and we integrated with APIs for latitude & longitude and time-in-transit conversions.
We implemented advanced data filtering capabilities to allow the ability to quickly filter, sort, search, and manage inventory, orders, certificates, and admin data.
On-hand inventory will be assigned to orders based on how the orders are sorted. If an order can't be fulfilled due to lack of inventory, it will be highlighted.
Outcomes
By making it easy to manage orders and ship products, they now have an extremely efficient fulfillment process that allows them to maximize their efforts and revenue.
By having the new software allow for a smoother fulfillment process, the Chief River Nursery team saves time, the company saves money, and they have confidence that technology can have a positive impact on their business.
By allowing them to maximize their staffing for higher output and getting orders to the right places at the right time, they experience less warranty claims and boost customer satisfaction to new heights.
By having a newly designed database, application, and software integrations, it ensures that their inventory levels and order statuses are always up-to-date, reducing errors and enhancing decision-making.
By building a new database and web application, they are now able to access data from multiple sources and have consistent functionality across their multiple companies in a single application.
By building the application with scalability in mind, the team is enabled with the ability to have easy updates and additional future features as Chief River Nursery grows and their needs evolve.
Technologies
Utilized for its flexibility and reusable component-based architecture, allowing for a responsive and interactive user interface.
A powerful React framework that enhances the user experience through server-side rendering, leading to faster page loads.
ASP.NET Core is renowned for its performance, security, and scalability. This framework enabled us to create a high-performing backend system capable of managing the complex data processing and business logic
Chosen for its utility-first approach to styling, allowing us to efficiently design a custom, modern look and feel without leaving the comfort of our JSX code.
The database management system was chosen for its reliability, high performance, comprehensive features and scalability to support Chief River Nursery's current and future expansion plans.
Utilized for hosting, storage, and security, ensuring high availability and reliability. By implementing a serverless architecture, we minimized operational cost and maximized performance.
About Chief River Nursery
Chief River Nursery carries a variety of conifers, hardwoods, shrubs, fruit trees, and non-plant products, as well as, offer variety packages of these products. They guarantee their products will grow and thrive when customers plant and care based on their recommendations due to the nursery stock they sell being healthy and viable. Something Chief River Nursery takes seriously is keeping their costs low and providing quality customer service, which is something they are exceptional at doing. One way they are able to do this is by streamlining their business through the use of technology.
Services
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