Having Lost $500,000 to SAP, Grow Lamp Manufacturer Turns to MRPeasy

Tennessee-based Horticulture Lighting Group has harnessed the power of MRP software to streamline its operations and drive sustained growth. “We managed to implement MRPeasy in under 3 months without many issues, a sharp contrast to big ERPs,” says CFO Bruce Heinemann.

Empowering indoor plant growers with advanced LED solutions

Horticulture Lighting Group is a lighting manufacturer from Tennessee, 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. HLG offers its diverse array of lighting solutions throughout the USA via retailers and authorized resellers, as well as wholesale and direct-to-consumer.

LED lighting represents a big leap in efficiency and productivity for indoor growing operations. Compared to heat lamps and other traditional lighting systems, LED grow lights provide far better performance per watt while emitting considerably less heat. For commercial plant operations and home growers alike, this means much smaller operating and energy costs, higher yields, better quality crops, and a superior return on investment.

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

The first software HLG tried was a relatively simple stock tracking system. About half a year in, however, the software’s limits had become apparent – HLG needed broader visibility over all aspects of the business, not just the warehouse. This prompted a decision by management to go all in and implement a package from the manufacturing ERP giant SAP.

CFO and operations manager at Horticulture Lighting Group, Bruce Heinemann, knew that SAP implementations tend to drag on and accrue excessive costs. Having prior experience with big-ticket ERPs, he was skeptical about the company’s decision to go in this direction. Sadly, his doubts were realized – 9 months and more than half a million dollars into the project, 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 are so many bells and whistles in there that you don’t need. The complexity of implementation really frustrates users. They give you a list of items you need to set up, but it’s so long and full of features that leave you wondering.”

MRP software designed for SME manufacturers

In urgent need of 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. However, 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 most of the online information answered our questions regarding implementation and 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

MRPeasy managed to win over HLG’s employees even before implementation was completed. Useful data from the production workflows that the company wasn’t getting before quickly proved MRPeasy’s 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 thanks to reliable manufacturing data. “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. Confident in the software’s capabilities, the team is set on further expanding MRPeasy’s use cases in the coming months.

With a no-strings-attached, 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.

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