Horticulture Lighting Group is a Tennessee-based lighting manufacturer specializing in high-efficiency LED lamps for indoor plant-growing operations. The company has been active since 2016, when LED grow lights first became commercially viable in the horticulture market. The company has seen steady growth since its inception and today employs around 40 people.
When Horticulture Lighting Group started out in 2016, managing the production workflows, warehouse, and inventory was viable without dedicated software. To this day, the company has a relatively simple supply chain with around 15 bills of materials, 500 part numbers, and mostly stable vendors. However, as the production volume grew, tracking inventory levels and movements became increasingly important. In 2021, the decision was made to implement inventory management software.
Big-ticket ERP system failed to launch
A few months after implementing a simple stock tracking system HLG realized that they needed broader visibility over all aspects of the business. This prompted a decision by management to implement a package from the manufacturing ERP giant SAP.
CFO and operations manager at Horticulture Lighting Group, Bruce Heinemann, knew that SAP implementations can drag on and accrue excessive costs. He was skeptical about the company’s decision to go in this direction. Sadly, his doubts were not unfounded – 9 months and more than half a million dollars into the project, the implementation was scrapped. SAP never went live.
“I’ve seen it many times dealing with bigger ERP systems,” Bruce comments, “especially in smaller companies. There’s so many bells and whistles in there that you don’t need. The complexity of implementation really frustrates users.”
ERP software designed for small and medium manufacturers
In urgent need for a viable solution, the team started evaluating alternatives. Bruce recalls: “After the SAP debacle, we were very clear about our requirements. The new software had to satisfy our business needs, be easy to implement, inexpensive, and importantly, not require a long-term commitment.”
Since Horticulture Lighting Group has diverse sales channels, they also needed to integrate services like ShipStation, Shopify, Strike, PayPal, and others with the would-be inventory and production management system.
Management evaluated a number of different systems including QuickBooks ERP, as the company uses QuickBooks for finance. But it was SME-focused MRPeasy that seemed to best fit the company’s requirements. It ticked all the boxes, supported integrations with all major third-party services, and boasted an impressive number of product videos and comprehensive documentation to boot.
Bruce comments: “The functionality videos were really impressive. It was easy to go through the modules and the online information answered most of our questions regarding functionality.“ In March 2023, implementation was started by several employees on a part-time basis. In stark contrast to the SAP project, MRPeasy was up and running in just under 3 months.
Benefits of the new system were immediately apparent to employees
MRPeasy managed to win over HLG’s employees even before implementation was completed. Useful data from the production workflows quickly proved its value. “With 'big' ERPs, complexity turns people off, and there is no buy-in. MRPeasy’s implementation was in sharp contrast to SAP in this regard,” Bruce comments.
In a short amount of time, the new system thoroughly improved Horticulture Lighting Group’s operations management. Heineman remarks: “With MRPeasy, managing the whole operation has seen big improvements from traceability, inventory, procurement, and vendor selection, to pricing, quoting, and operational performance. We can now have discussions using accurate and up-to-date information that MRPeasy provides. All this with a modest implementation effort, at low cost, and with no long-term commitment!”
HLG’s customers have also been positively affected by the new software as quoting is much more accurate. “MRPeasy enables much more accurate lead time calculations that we can share with confidence with our customers,” says Bruce.
Lighting the way to increased efficiency
Today, Horticulture Lighting Group is using MRPeasy for stock and warehouse management, procurement, and production planning. And the team is set on further expanding MRPeasy’s use cases in the coming months.
With a scalable, flexible, and affordable software solution guiding operations, HLG can focus on steady growth. This newfound agility is enabling the company to channel more resources into innovation and customer satisfaction to illuminate further efficiency.
Learn more about MRPeasy by visiting https://www.mrpeasy.com/.
