Why Generic ERP Software Fails in the Plant and Growing Industry

Generic ERP software was built for businesses that sell things that don’t change.

Plants are not those things.

They grow, shrink, die, get reclassified, and change value constantly. Yet generic ERP systems only update inventory when someone manually tells them to. That means your software is always behind your greenhouse, and your team knows it.

So they stop trusting it.

Seasonality is another breaking point. Spring isn’t a “busy quarter” for growers. It’s controlled chaos. Production, labor, orders, and cash flow all spike at once. Generic ERP treats this like an exception instead of the rule, forcing growers back into spreadsheets when accuracy matters most.

Then there’s overselling. Generic ERP can tell you how many plants you have, but not how many will be sellable, when they’ll be ready, or whether shrink will wipe them out first. That’s how orders get promised and missed.

Most growers don’t quit generic ERP right away. They work around it. Spreadsheets come back. Tribal knowledge fills the gaps. The ERP quietly becomes an accounting system instead of an operational one.

That’s failure. Just slower and more expensive.

SBI Software is different because it was built for growing operations, not adapted to them.
Our ERP understands live plant inventory, long grow cycles, seasonality, shrink, and real-world production planning. It gives growers forward-looking visibility, not yesterday’s numbers.

That’s why growers choose SBI Software.