Schriemer Family Farm, located in Otterburne, Manitoba, is a multi-generational, vertically integrated operation. They grow a diverse offering of fresh vegetables, including field-grown onions, pumpkins, squash, and sweet corn, alongside greenhouse-grown tomatoes, cucumbers, and sweet and hot peppers. Supplying major retailers and local co-op shops, their own pack house, storage, and logistics infrastructure also allows them to pack and ship for smaller local growers.
This broad product range and custom-pack capability have made Schriemer a leader in Manitoba horticulture (supplying over half the province's seasonal pumpkins and squash) but it also creates significant operational complexity.
For Serena Schriemer, who handles the administration, this complexity translated into 16-hour days spent juggling constant communication overhead, fragile custom spreadsheets for orders, and the manual reconciliation of logistics paperwork.
The critical pain point centered on their ability to ship mixed orders to large customers. A simple spreadsheet error could compromise labeling, inventory data, and off-loading paperwork, leading to increased costs and customer distrust. This crushing administrative workload is what drove Schriemer Family Farm to seek out farm management software and ultimately, to implement Croptracker.
Serena has worked out a detailed inventory and order management system using the Order Desk, Packing, Receiving, Storage, Shipping, Harvest, Field Pack, Spray, and GAP Reports and Audits modules. In her first season, working closely with our support team, Serena developed a streamlined workflow that has already dramatically reduced the time spent troubleshooting orders and communicating with harvest, packing, and shipping teams.
Before Croptracker, handling all the orders of our farm created a massive amount of work, leaving me stuck to my desk, worried about expensive mistakes in our mixed-customer orders. Now, every single product is digitally validated and tracked, instantly connecting our inventory to our shipments for guaranteed accuracy.
Streamlined order management
At the beginning of each week, Serena is focused first on organizing all the farm’s incoming orders. The first step in this process is to gather incoming orders and create Sales Order Transactions in Croptracker. Transactions are features of the Order Desk module and function essentially as inventory orders. They are the central communication and inventory management link for Schriemer’s workflow.
For every order that comes in for the week, Serena has created a corresponding Sales Order with details about what products have been ordered, the customer and the delivery address and expected delivery date. Now it is easy to see the total amount of product needed to fill the orders coming for the week and Serena can quickly ensure that all the inventory needs are available and packed in time.
Inventory has been logged in Croptracker as it is harvested, packed or delivered from outside growers using the Field Pack, Packing and Receiving modules. If Serena notices when running available inventory reports that there are not enough products ready to meet the orders for the week, she will assign workers to harvest or pack from their own fields and greenhouse or she will contact nearby growers that supply Schriemer to ensure they deliver product in time for it to reach the customer.
The logistics workflow: office to field
When the availability of the products on order has been confirmed, Serena will then start to schedule shipments and assign order loading to her staff on the ground. By creating Shipping events with attached Transactions, she is organizing multiple orders to go on a truck. Schriemer handles their own delivery and is therefore able to optimize order logistics and pack several orders onto one truck to go on the same day. Once the orders have been organized and set for the week, the role of filling the orders passes to the staff on the ground.
The order filling and truck loading on the ground is managed by Gonzalo. Gonzalo has his own Croptracker login and while Serena enters all the orders under her user name in English, Gonzalo uses the mobile Croptracker app in Spanish, making communication between the office team and the shipping team easier.
Digital validation and traceability
At the start of each day, when Gonzalo logs into Croptracker on his phone, he can see all the shipments scheduled for the day with the associated customer orders as attached Transactions. He starts gathering the inventory listed on each transaction, and as it is loaded onto the truck, Gonzalo will scan the product tags on each item against the transaction, logging each piece against the order until it is filled. When the first customer order is ready, he will move to the next transaction in the list for this shipping event. When all orders are all filled, the Shipping event and inventory status will be changed to loaded and shipped, removing the products from the available inventory in Schriemer’s account.
This order filling process provides digital validation that the order has been filled properly and that the traceability of each product on the order is maintained. Each product has the growing location, variety information, harvest date and lot code digitized and searchable within Croptracker. Additionally, Serena and Gonzalo can generate and print Waybills and Shipping manifests from Croptracker to go with the Sales Order and Invoice, passing on all necessary data to the customer when the delivery arrives.
As a heavy Order Desk user, Serena has already provided valuable feedback that has informed new features in the module. This past year, Croptracker’s development staff launched bulk transaction adjustment features based on Serena’s request.This helps more quickly adjust orders without having to change them all individually.
For the next season with Croptracker, Serena plans to implement Spray and GAP Audit and Report workflows to digitize Schriemer’s audit required record keeping. Croptracker on boarding staff will help ensure all the agricultural chemicals and fertilizers Schriemer uses are added to the chemical inventory in their account and that all staff performing sprays on the farm are trained in how to record applications in Croptracker.
Growth through operational excellence
For Schriemer Family Farm, the implementation of Croptracker means more than merely replacing spreadsheets, it is an important step towards scaling their business through operational excellence. By digitizing their complex order fulfillment process, with Serena’s office entry in English to Gonzalo’s mobile-driven scanning and loading in Spanish, they established a source of truth for their inventory and logistics.
Croptracker’s integrated workflow has helped eliminate the costly errors and communication breakdowns that once plagued their mixed orders. The validation inherent in scanning product tags during the loading process not only ensures customer satisfaction but also provides instant, digital traceability for every item shipped. By gaining control over their administrative complexity, Schriemer Family Farm hasn’t just cut back on 16 hour days in the office, they have unlocked the time and clarity needed to focus on strategic growth.
