Fruit Fantastic

A momentous day was in the offing July 9 for Steve Clark and the 50 employees at his north Charlotte County fresh produce business.

That was the day the $12 million company, then named Sheckler Produce, turned on a new comprehensive computer system. This wasn't your average software upgrade, though. This was a large-scale Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) project. It was produce 2.0, a system that would whisk the company from yellow sheets, pencils and paper to the digital age.

Yet the move slowly went from momentous to maddening. Instead of efficiency and simplicity, the switch became a business owner's worst nightmare. There were six weeks of daily chaos and confusion. Delayed and downright lost orders were the norm. “It has been a very painful process,” Clark says. “But we are beginning to see the benefits.”