Insight

Fully remote deployment highlights the benefits of working in the cloud

When COVID hit, everyone needed to adapt. For Growflo, it meant fully remote deployments.

It's late 2019, and we had just met Pacific Growers to demonstrate Growflo. They were suitably impressed, and in early 2020 they chose Growflo. Everyone was excited. Then COVID hit. Suddenly everyone was dealing with the challenges the pandemic brought, including concern for loved ones, travel restrictions, remote working, and widespread uncertainty. One of the biggest questions for the Growflo team became how to successfully deploy ERP systems under these new circumstances.

Fast-forward to late summer 2020, and both teams were eager to move the project forward. This meant one thing – a fully remote deployment. At this point, there had only been a single face-to-face sales meeting.

Over the months that followed, both teams held regular remote meetings to identify requirements and refine workflows. The Growflo team developed the functionality needed to meet Pacific Growers' specific processes, while the Pacific team reviewed progress through a dedicated development version of the system. By 2022, Pacific had successfully completed an entire season using Growflo and, in their own words, they "love" it.

The project proved that distance and travel restrictions are not barriers to successfully deploying Growflo. With the right communication, planning, and collaboration, implementations can be delivered just as effectively without being on site.

Managing Director Alan Brown commented:

"Deploying an ERP system requires commitment, communication, and patience. We demonstrated that neither distance nor restrictions hampered our ability to deliver on our promises to Pacific Growers. The Growflo ERP, Android App, and trade webshop have had a significant positive impact on the Pacific operation, and both teams can take great pride in achieving this during such challenging times."