Foothills Nurseries transforms order and inventory management using Zoho Creator

The company

Foothills Nurseries (FHN) is a trusted name in horticulture across Alberta, known for cultivating prairie-hardy trees, shrubs, and perennials that withstand the region’s demanding climate. Located just outside Calgary, Foothills is the closest wholesale nursery in the area, operating on 450 acres with a commitment to delivering top-tier plant material to landscape professionals, municipalities, and homeowners alike.

With a lean team of 15 during the off-season and over 30 staff members during peak planting months, Foothills manages a high volume of orders and logistics while maintaining its promise of timely delivery and planting services. Owner and General Manager Josh Poffenroth purchased the business in 2019 after more than two decades as a customer.

The problem

The company relied heavily on manual, paper-based processes to handle critical workflows like order taking, picking, packing, and shipping. Staff used printed documents in the field, making it difficult to keep up with real-time order changes. Any updates to orders required manual intervention, often leading to errors and delays that impacted customer satisfaction.

Their legacy system, housed on an on-premises server, restricted access to inventory data outside the office. Staff working in the field had to record stock changes on paper and then manually upload them later. This lag, combined with the fast turnover of living inventory, resulted in significant inaccuracies. There was no automatic deduction of items once shipped, and staff had to manually remove products from stock, contributing to backlogs and a growing inventory management problem.

After ruling out costly custom ERPs and finding no out-of-the-box systems that could handle their scale, Josh discovered Zoho Creator.

Recognizing that they needed expert help, the team interviewed multiple developers before meeting BSP, a Zoho Premium Partner who understood the unique operational challenges and translated them into an actionable development plan.

The solution

BSP built a fully customized Zoho Creator ERP for Foothills Nurseries, integrating with Zoho CRM and Zoho Books for a seamless flow from quote to payment. The system covers the entire order lifecycle, from the moment a customer request comes in to final delivery.

Inventory management

The inventory module is capable of tracking thousands of plant SKUs across over 2,000 rows and multiple farm locations. The module updates availability in real time, ensuring sales teams can quote with confidence and operations teams can respond immediately to demand. Orders confirmed in the system automatically trigger downstream actions, linking to purchasing for special orders and feeding into daily production schedules.

Order management

Running alongside inventory is the PPPS (pick, pack, pull, ship) process—a workflow adapted from high-volume retail logistics and tailored to the unique demands of a tree farm. This module has become the operational hub for field crews, updating dynamically as orders change and ensuring a smooth, repeatable process.

• Pick guides field crews to the exact rows and locations where ordered trees are growing.
• Pack covers the careful digging and root-ball preparation for trees that need to be shipped, often involving multiple basket sizes and liners.
• Pull coordinates the movement of these packed items from staging areas.
• Ship ensures accurate loading and dispatch.

The system also addresses customer communication, with automation designed to keep clients informed at every stage. Soon, integration with Twilio will send real-time SMS updates when orders are confirmed, dug, pulled, and shipped.

Benefits and ROI

The transformation at Foothills Nurseries has been both operational and strategic. Before implementing Zoho Creator, daily operations were weighed down by manual processes, communication gaps, and the constant risk of stock inaccuracies. Today, the business runs on a unified platform, where sales, operations, and field crews are all working from the same live data.

Key outcomes include:

• 200% efficiency gain: They tripled production without tripling headcount, avoiding bottlenecks in both office and field operations.
• Seamless field-to-office coordination: Mobile access ensures staff always works with the latest data, drastically reducing costly errors.
• Faster, more accurate sales process: Quotes are based on real-time stock, boosting customer confidence and accelerating order turnaround.

Looking forward

Foothills Nurseries sees Zoho Creator not as a one-time fix but as a long-term growth partner. Working closely with BSP, they continue to evolve their system and add capabilities that match their expanding operations. The next phase will focus on fine-tuning processes, integrating with external applications, and rolling out more modules to further streamline the customer experience.