Easy Synchronization

The Berry Family of Nurseries is one of the largest privately owned wholesale nurseries in the country, with nurseries coast-to-coast. Berry's six divisions have nurseries in Oregon, Oklahoma, Tennessee, North Carolina, South Carolina and Michigan and at the height of the season employ over 3,500 workers. The Berry Family recently started using Sync/PDI for Distributors to enhance their business with Lowe's.

With the size of Berry's operations and the nature of live goods, the relationship between Lowe's and The Berry Family is complex. Lowe's deals with five of the Berry divisions and many shipping points. Recently Lowe's Merchants wanted greater flexibility in how they worked with the Berry divisions. In addition, due to last minute weather issues, Lowe's will sometimes ask Berry to source products from other nurseries to maintain in-store stock levels for critical weekend selling periods. In GDSN terms, these business needs meant that The Berry Family needed the ability to publish and subscribe to product data between their divisions and with other nurseries.

With Sync/PDI for Distributors, The Berry Family now has the ability to publish/subscribe between their divisions and other nurseries. This eliminates the manual re-entry of product data but more importantly means that within a matter of hours Lowe's can receive the new item setup information. Judy Burks, Berry's Vice President of Administration commented "We do try to stay on top of all the new technology but not at any cost. It was much more cost effective for us to use a solution partner for data sync than to do it in-house. And we have been very pleased with the solution and the support provided by Aligntrac". These new capabilities are allowing The Berry Family to meet Lowe's requirements. When you are dealing with perishable products getting the right product to the right location places even more time pressure on data sync. A challenge that Sync/PDI for Distributors is addressing.