Choosing a new ERP platform is one of the most important decisions a company can make. The correct ERP system can serve as the foundation of your entire business, propelling it to new heights. The wrong ERP can be an anchor, locking you into inefficient, backwards workflows that stifle growth and innovation. Food and beverage companies face unique challenges because of the perishable nature of much of your inventory and need an ERP system that can handle those hurdles.
Many businesses grow paralyzed at the number of choices for ERP. Below we will offer seven functions food and beverage providers should focus on to ensure you choose the right platform for success.
First Expired, First Out - Inventory Control
One of the costliest mistakes a food and beverage provider can make is letting inventory sit too long, letting it spoil. To combat this, food and beverage companies usually create a “first to expire, first out the door” inventory policy, shipping the closest to expiration items first, continuing in order. This is a simple policy in theory, however in practice it takes attention to detail and quality control, and can be difficult for some ERP platforms to handle.
An industry-specific ERP solution, such as Aptean with Dynamics 365 Business Central, is built with food and beverage providers in mind, allowing for this sort of in-depth inventory control to be implemented. Using barcode scanning technology for warehouses combined with time-based organization allows businesses greater accuracy over your data, which is all updated in real time.
Using this live, accurate data, food and beverage businesses will see a decrease in waste, directly improving your bottom line, as well as efficiency in turnaround and customer fulfillment.
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Supply Chain Visibility - Traceability Module
More than ever, food and beverage businesses are being asked to provide clarity and traceability for where and how your items are sourced, from product sources, to production, to housing, ultimately to delivery. ERP can be the key for clarifying the often-murky waters of the supply chain.
Data tracking is key for traceability. A modern ERP platform gives food and beverage providers the ability to track vital information about an ingredient or product across every stage of production. This visibility is key for conscious consumers, who make up an ever-increasing percentage of the marketplace. The best platforms offer more than basic data points. Granular, quality-based information is valuable to have for the increasingly discerning consumer set. Color, size, and grade are three common distinguishers, and users have the ability to set up near-endless customized categories.
Features such as automated data capture help food and beverage providers record the ingredient and product data into your system, rather than have to enter it manually. The best platforms, such as Aptean + Business Central, also offer automated controls that populate alerts when entries are outside of normal ranges, ensuring better quality control.
These traceability tools should be targeted for their significant efficiency increases, as well as the peace of mind they give users, allowing you to know and understand the entire history of the products you are buying.
Formulating Success - Recipe Management Tools
Your recipes and formulations are the lifeblood of your business. Proprietary formulas and combinations can be what separates them from your competition and having an ERP platform that doesn’t simply account for these vital pieces, rather helping maximize their effectiveness, can be a tremendous boon.
Top tier platforms offer calculation and conversion tools, ensuring that recipes stay consistent even when scaled up or down. This can be all-important for food companies experiencing expansion, particularly to new markets where there is no central storehouse of pre-made product. They also feature tools to handle replacement ingredients, ensuring the quality of the recipe is not compromised, even when ingredients are unavailable due to supply chain issues or other disruptions.
Platforms like Aptean, with Business Central, also offer tools to optimize and automate workflows, such as data entry, redundancy removal, and cross-checking for errors. These automations drastically reduce the odds of human error, improving the user experience for both employees and customers.
These tools, when used properly, allow food and beverage businesses to make the most of your recipes, ensuring consistency no matter who is making them, and driving creativity and exploration when making new ones.
Dealing with Tough Issues - Allergen Management and Recall Readiness
A recent survey concluded that over forty percent of children and half of adults with food allergies in the US have experienced a severe reaction in their lives. This startling statistic is one indicator of the importance for food businesses to maintain safe practices when it comes to common allergens. If the human impact is not enough, the financial cost of an allergen incident leading to a recall is potentially devastating.
As outlined above, top tier ERP platforms offer in-depth traceability functionality, which can be a vital tool in logging and tracking which potential allergens are in which items, as well as inventory tools for setting controls on what ingredients can be stored where, effectively segregating potential contaminants.
In the unlikely event of an allergen contamination, your ERP platform should have tools to facilitate a timely and efficient recall of the affected products. A modern, industry-specific platform like Aptean will have tools specifically designed to identify and track the affected products, from warehouse to final destination, as well as tools to reach out to customers who may have purchased them. As a top-of-the-line solution, Aptean with Business Central offers users the ability to automate this function, ensuring no customers are ever missed during the notification period of a recall.
Automations for Quality Assurance, Compliance, and Efficiency
Any new platform a food and beverage business upgrades should offer tools to help maximize efficiency through automation.
A modern, agile platform will allow businesses to streamline workflows, such as data capture and entry, product tagging, and report creation. These automations will both increase the speed at which tasks are accomplished and also lower the risk of human error while simultaneously allowing users to focus on other, more business-critical tasks.
These functions can also extend to quality control, as tasks such as cross-checking and mistake correction can be automated, achieving the desired results quicker, and with less possibility of errors being introduced into the system.
Automation can also be crucial for compliance and regulatory upkeep, giving users the ability to automatically create documentation trails for audit readiness. For food and beverage companies, this can be even more important, as you face stricter regulatory controls because of the nature of your products. A modern ERP should also offer yearly financial updates to ensure that tax codes and payroll information are kept up to date with shifting laws and regulations.
Plan for the Future - Forecasting for Demand, Scheduling
The right ERP system should enable business leaders to plan for the future, not simply get by in the present. Food and beverage companies should ensure your new platform has robust scheduling and route mapping capabilities to ensure that your product is delivered as efficiently as possible to avoid costly spoilage and waste.
Additionally, the right ERP system will have advanced forecasting tools to analyze supply chain issues, expected demand, and other external considerations to help forecast costs, sales, and cash flow. These tools can help leadership make faster, more informed decisions about what, and how much to order, staffing, and warehousing, leading to lessened waste and increased profitability.
Reporting and Visualization
Finally, food and beverage companies should ensure your new ERP platform has robust reporting and visualization capabilities.
The ability to easily, even automatically, generate easy to consume reports is incredibly valuable for food distributors, especially when used in tandem with advanced analytics capabilities featured in top of class systems like Aptean with Business Central.
The ability to drill deeper, past the surface data into the hard numbers, gives CFOs and other leadership the ability to make the most educated, timely decision, while the easy to use and aesthetically pleasing reporting make keeping top-level, non-financial executives informed easier.
These tools make it easier for companies to make decisions based on data, rather than gut feelings, positioning them as leaders in a crowded marketplace.
Unique Challenges Require Custom Solutions
Because most, if not all, of your products are perishable, food and beverage companies face unique challenges on top of an already crowded and unpredictable business environment. These challenges mean that finding the right ERP platform is vital to ensure efficiency, profitability, and growth.
Food and beverage companies should target an ERP platform that offers the ability to maintain:
- a “first to expire, first out” warehousing policy
- clear traceability functions to ensure products are documented and tracked correctly
- recipe management to protect vital intellectual property
- allergen control and recall readiness functions
- standard ERP tools like data analytics, reporting, and automation tools
While most modern ERP providers will offer some of these tools, however, an industry-tailored solution like Aptean, powered by Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central, will offer the complete array of tools needed to truly take a food and beverage company to the next level.
Get to know Apten with this on-demand webinar
