Ridge Quest

The situation

Ridge Quest advises fruit growers across West Michigan. Their crop advisors scout orchards on foot — recording insect counts, disease observations, trap data, and treatment recommendations for every block they visit. That data has to get back to the office for reporting, billing, and regulatory compliance.

For 20 years, they ran this operation on a Windows Access database carried into the field on laptops. It worked — and it served them well for a long time.

Time for something better

The old system had carried the business through two decades of growth. But it was showing its age. The Access database was fragile and hard to maintain. The laptops were clumsy in the field — slow to boot, hard to use standing in an orchard row. Connectivity in rural orchards was unreliable, and the database wasn't built for offline work.

Getting data from the field to the office still meant manual handoffs. Reports were delayed. Billing fell behind. And the person who originally built the system was long gone — so making changes felt risky.

Ridge Quest had outgrown a system that had served them well. They were ready for something that could keep up with where the business was headed.

What we built

An iPad app that advisors carry into the orchard, paired with a web dashboard for the office team. Built around how Ridge Quest actually works — not how a software company thinks they should work.

The app works offline. Everything is saved locally first, then syncs automatically when connectivity is available. Advisors never have to think about signal strength. They scout, they record, they move on. Photos are captured in context and attached directly to the scouting report — no more matching images to the right block after the fact.

The office sees data as soon as it syncs. Reports flow directly into the billing workflow. Advisors own the field data. The office handles invoicing. Both sides see the same information, but neither can step on the other's work.

What changed