A Growing B2B Success Story

A major aspect of the commercial greenhouse business is a seasonal need for hundreds or thousands of plant labels—colorful, informative labels that help customers choose the right plants. That's in part why PlantFocus.com was created—for online label ordering in five languages—and why Compuware was chosen to help build the site.

PlantFocus.com was set up in October 2001 as a subsidiary of Eco & Green, a reseller of IT programs for garden centers. PlantFocus.com was already a web site that provided information on plants and horticulture, and which offered an impressive library of plant photos. But Eco & Green wanted to go one step further. The company wanted to anticipate demand from commercial growers by offering a site on the web where growers and garden centers can order labels online with specific instructions and photos of the plants. Their intention was to develop a brand-new site that would integrate the existing information—but with a completely different look. Other new functions were also planned, such as detailed and advanced search operations.

The added value of such a site for PlantFocus.com would come from their ability to respond quickly to market demands and problems confronting growers. Thanks to PlantFocus.com and the Compuware-developed solution, even a small nursery can now have its own labels produced incorporating its logo, plant price and other personalized information.

William Van Herreweghe, CEO of PlantFocus.com, teamed up with Compuware to develop this site.

"I chose Compuware initially on cost, of course," explained Van Herreweghe. "But I chose them particularly because of the commitment shown by the entire team, its understanding of our project and its many years of experience in information technology. We were on the same wavelength, and that was extremely important for me."

Meeting a Growing Challenge

The challenge to Compuware was to deliver a reliable, expandable and scalable web application, and to do all this within a tight deadline.

	"I chose [Compuware] particularly because of the commitment shown by the entire team, its understanding of our project and its many years of experience in information technology. We were on the same wavelength, and that was extremely important for me." —William Van Herreweghe, CEO PlantFocus.com

In order to implement PlantFocus.com's vision, Compuware's team decided to create a B2B web application based on the .NET platform, Visual Studio .NET, and a SQL Server 2000 database. DigitalZone was used to manage the photo database. "The use of Visual Studio .NET enabled our developers to substantially speed up the development pace," explained David Boschmans, project manager at Compuware.

Compuware's services professionals developed a solution for PlantFocus.com, which is a complete business-to-business system. The main module consists of a portal that provides PlantFocus.com with a control system for online orders, and which makes dynamic use of the plant care information (watering, need for sunlight, flowering time, etc.). This information is linked in turn to photos of plants, which enables illustrated plant labels to be printed in a predefined format.

Compuware DevPartner Studio, a suite of multi-language productivity tools, helped the developers locate performance bottlenecks, as well as easily view application, component and stored procedure performance data in an accurate, intuitive interface. DevPartner Studio provides unmatched performance analysis detail at the machine, process, component or source line level.

The developers also used Compuware Application Expert to predict application performance before it went into production. This ensured the application met performance expectations, and that wait times were well within acceptable boundaries.

The online database containing 40,000 plants and their characteristics, together with 120,000 photos, means that any company selling or growing plants can now order personalized labels, no matter the quantity required.

The whole order process is handled online. The customer can select the desired layout, have their own logo and barcode printed on the label, select the desired photo from the 120,000 photos in the database, choose the language(s) to be used, and so on. Once all the data has been input, a customer can even view their personal design on the site. The order is sent via the Internet and is downloaded directly to the printer, which prints the labels on paper resistant to UV radiation, frost and water.

"Thanks to this system, the delivery time is very short, and there is no minimum order quantity," said Van Herreweghe. "Customers only need to hold a minimum stock of labels and can then order merely the required quantity in accordance with their crop yield. Our web site has enabled them to save a great deal of money, in part because our personalized labels are around the same price as the previous labels."

Compuware's team, comprising one project manager/analyst and two programmers, spent five months implementing the ambitious project. During this time they analyzed the project requirements, and then developed and tested the application. The final product was then handed over to PlantFocus.com so that the company could continue managing the web site in house. PlantFocus.com is now operational. Major horticultural groups have placed their first orders; labels were printed and are now in use.

"PlantFocus.com's future is assured," noted Van Herreweghe. "We received orders for Belgium from major international groups immediately after the site's launch. There are now considerable prospects for France, the Netherlands, Luxembourg, Germany and later, undoubtedly, Italy and Spain. Moreover, we don't intend to stop there. In the future, we would like to develop online information stands in collaboration with Compuware which garden centers can incorporate at their points of sale. This will enable private customers as well to make use of the information we hold."