July 19, 2023 How Sunday Reduced Go-to-market Timing by 8-weeks

An inside look at how having a streamlined workflow can keep your business efficient.

Lawns are kind of a big deal. There are more than 40 million acres of lawn and turf in the United States alone and grass is America’s third largest crop. Taking care of all this greenery can be overwhelming. This is where smart lawn care company, Sunday, comes in. Sunday leverages technology to provide a sustainable and personalized approach to lawn care. The company uses a unified system that combines soil data, weather patterns, and lawn measurements to create customized treatment plans for customers, providing all the nutrients their specific lawn requires.

Commonly used pesticides can be toxic for the environment, which is why Sunday uses cutting-edge plant science to feed lawns without harsh chemicals. The company’s sustainability mission is catching on with consumers across the U.S. resulting in a rapid expansion with entry into brick-and-mortar retailers such as Walmart and Lowe’s in addition to its highly successful e-commerce platform.

A Lawn Care Conundrum

Personalized lawn treatments create more complicated backend processes that require accurate sourcing of materials. When Sunday needed to track down raw product ingredients for a manufacturer, it required input from three different parties to determine what needed to be purchased – either by Sunday, or its third party vendor – as well as what was already in stock with its co-filler partner. Manual record keeping led to miscommunication about who was responsible for ordering some of the materials. Consequently, Sunday missed having an essential raw material on hand that was needed when the time came for creating the final product.

The unfortunate result was a six week product delay, which then caused a ripple effect on the company’s operations, including product development, manufacturing and marketing. Sunday needed to quickly correct course and avoid future product delays with an easy way to document its ingredients within each product, using one source for accessing each product record. That’s when it turned to Propel Software.

A Cutting Edge Solution

Propel’s product value management platform eliminated Sunday’s miscommunication about ingredient information, providing collaborative insight into every aspect of the product creation, within the organization as well as with suppliers. It connects everyone involved in the product development process – from design and engineering to sales, marketing and service – to optimize decision making and drive business efficiency. Now, if there is an issue with a supplier, Sunday has real-time access to all aspects of product development to communicate effectively with suppliers to manage inventory. The company can easily see which two or three suppliers support each product with various ingredients, making it much more efficient with time and resources. This unified software platform is critical in streamlining operations and reducing the potential for delays and errors. A win for Sunday, but also a huge win for customers.

Using Propel to manage engineering change orders, Sunday has reduced process time by 15% in just 6 months. By setting up internal rules within the Propel system for requesting new items, artwork numbers, and product inserts, Sunday has also streamlined sign off capabilities for the organization, providing approvals with just three signatures so that it can continue to optimize operations.

“As a start-up, getting the team’s buy-in on a product management system is critical. We needed one source of truth – and, to get that source of truth, we needed people to use it regularly,” says Joe Griebel, Director Physical Product at Sunday Lawn Care. “Propel provided an easy-to-use interface that helped us get up to speed quickly. It also has the flexibility to make it our own so it can grow with our constantly changing business needs.”

Sunday’s experience highlights the importance of clear communication with suppliers. When a company prioritizes communication and collaboration it is better positioned to compete in the marketplace and drive long-term, profitable success.

Subscribe to Industry Today