Lowaters Nursery based near Fareham in Hampshire are well known nationally by retailers for their Garden Beauty branding and famed for their extensive range of Hebes. Lowaters are true business innovators, embracing many initiatives which have honed their business practices and produced profitable business growth. Following a busy spring season in 2008 Charles Carr, Nursery Director and James Plant, Sales Director realised change needed to take place in Sales administration if they were to maintain their momentum.

As Charles Carr explains, “the combination of our unique range, great branding and excellent service has produced a steady increase in our market share. As a result our office system was beginning to creak under the strain and we needed to see a dramatic increase in admin efficiency. We have a clear vision of future market aims and it was obvious our existing software would not be up to the job.”

“We made the right decision” 

Sourcing and evaluating potential new software is difficult, as James Plant points out: “We’d heard some good things about Passfield and after a series of meetings with the Passfield team our list of needs were all ticked; however nothing replaces actual day-to-day operational use. I am pleased to report office time and costs have been cut so we made the right decision.”

Passfield was quickly installed in August. Data transfer from their existing system took place on a Thursday afternoon and Passfield was up and running on Monday morning. “Lowaters set up went very well,” reports Tim Lamb, Passfield’s Marketing & Business manager. “In the first two weeks we were talking to the Lowaters operators several times a day, dealing with queries and carrying out online training as needed but this level of intensity dropped after a fortnight. It was particularly pleasing to discover how quickly they embraced the system. Even now exploring Passfield  is a part of their quest to increasing everyday efficiencies.”

Lowaters will shortly be launching the E Availability list, a pioneering new feature developed by Passfield’s technical team. Weekly availability lists will be emailed to Lowater customers as customised spreadsheets, generated by Passfield. On receipt the customer will fill in quantities required, email it back where Passfield will directly load it as an order. Keying in time at Lowaters will be cut dramatically.