IRELAND & USA - Gapping, I would venture to say, is the antithesis of productivity. Where knowledge is power, potential gaps in any operation present potential issues and lack of foresight.
“Prophet, our name, is exactly what we are: a prophetic tool. It’s looking forward all the time,” Mick Heatherington summarizes. The Vice President of Sales for North America for Prophet cuts quickly to the stakes of what he and his team manage. “As we all know, fresh produce is so fast-moving. If a problem is upon you, often it’s too late. You want to get a heads-up on particular supply chain issues coming down the line, whether that’s a vendor who can’t supply you with enough product because they have a quality problem, there’s been a weather event somewhere, or there’s been delays in getting product to the packhouses. We’re constantly giving you that information so that you can make the decisions to ensure your supply chain is accurate, and you’re using the right product for the right orders.”
If Mick sounds like an industry insider, it’s because he is. Not only has he been working with Prophet from its founding in 1989, he has helped the company adhere to being about, crafted within, and designed specifically for fresh produce. Now, with over 200 clients across the globe, he has been witness to the building of a continual network ensuring that Prophet technology is consistently renewing itself.
“A lot of the software we’ve developed is designed to allow businesses to look at any period forward. Not only are we flexible in what aspect of the produce industry we can serve, the longer you are our customer the more you benefit,” Mick shares.
Showcasing both the longevity of Prophet’s benefits and the breadth of what it can do are case studies for companies that are polar opposites within the produce space: California-based 4Earth Farms and Texas-based Lone Star Citrus.
“4Earth is a very vertical business: They grow, pack, ship, do repacking, value-added, and provide their own label as well as private label on a wide range of products. So, within its business are about six models of execution, and one of the reasons that their leadership team appreciates Prophet is because we have in effect functionality for every single one of those models,” Mick explains.
With both the real-time oversight and data-based foresight, there is no gap in information between the planted product to various facilities, through the production line and on to the customer.
“Prophet has all that functionality allowing 4Earth to see every consignment or lot that comes through the business—you’ve got the full story right as it’s happening,” Mick shares. “When running upward of 20 production lines in one facility alone, along with multiple operations in location across countries, Prophet being used in every part of the business saves an incredible amount of time, effort, and money.”
Lone Star, Mick continues, is a grower, packer, shipper of fewer commodities, known especially for its grapefruit offerings. The requirements here, Mick points out, are more about predicting yields as well as planning out packing and sales.
“As Lone Star brings bins into their packhouse and grade them, packing into various styles, Prophet is extremely useful in allowing them to see what’s happening and to do it quickly with real-time inventory. So, Prophet is also very flexible during the aftermath of, for example, a bad freeze that occurred in 2021,” Mick pointed out.
With rapid recovery needed, Mick said the weather event was an opportunity to reinvent the wheel a bit for the Texas grower as it side-stepped quickly into being a service provision company providing storage, packing, and logistics services to other produce companies.
“Prophet allowed them to make a lot of changes very quickly and to monitor the costs in doing so. Amid the change, it is crucial to ensure the new venture is paying its way, charges are correct, a profit is made. Our tools allowed Lone Star to shift quickly as a business,” he concluded.
So, whether you’re a grower, packer, shipper, wholesaler, processor, value-added packer, foodservice provider, broker, exporter, or importer, a model exists within Prophet’s repertoire. Two very different companies have all the same benefits and, by being a member, add to the ever-expanding capabilities of Prophet’s models.
By being a very configurable and agile piece of software, produce professionals are able to change the business, grow it, or just see all the pieces they thought they couldn’t. No gaps necessary.
