The unpredictable demands of COVID-19 have required agility and innovation from the food and beverage industry. With quickly changing industry demands in conjunction with consumer pressure for transparency on the source and quality of ingredients, the ability to respond quickly can determine success or failure in a highly competitive market.

An enterprise resource planning (ERP) solution can be a foundational resource to meet the challenging demands of compliance, food safety, cost reduction, and consumer demand.

The food and beverage industry faces challenges that make its needs unlike any other industry. It is highly regulated and under increasingly arduous demands by both regulatory sectors and consumers themselves. Food and beverage manufacturers face expectations to keep up with label requirements that can change from region to region.

Consumers and regulators also expect manufacturers to anticipate and respond quickly to quality and recall management. More pressure comes from consumers who want to know the origins of their food and demand accountability in ingredient listings along with detailed product information that includes specifics of the source of the ingredients and how environmentally friendly the product is.

A one-size-fits-all approach to an ERP system will not work for this highly specialised industry. With this in mind, industry experts have developed specific ERP solutions to meet the unique needs of food and beverage businesses. These specifications make it easier to install ERP software from the beginning and shorten the installation time because the software is made to fit the business’s specific needs.

A food industry-specific ERP solution provides standard ERP capabilities such as automating and streamlining customer service, accounting, and production processes. It also includes 24-hour security for off-site servers, updates for software, and automated monitoring and protection against cyberhackers and theft.

Food industry ERPs additionally allow engineers and plant workers to document all the labor and materials connected to production orders resulting in real-time cost analysis for projects. With this information, managers can make logical decisions about cost analysis and their production planning efforts. This constantly updated data will help align operational costs with the company’s goals and also help the organisation reduce its carbon footprint by eliminating most paper transactions.

With industry-specific ERP solutions, you get real-time access to production statuses regardless of your location – in the office or working remotely. Real-time updates for suppliers and customer needs are invaluable if it becomes necessary to resolve quality and productivity issues or reduce liability risks quickly. ERP systems can also organise customer information, sales history, and comprehensive member purchase data from any location.

You can also reduce costs by eliminating the need to train staff on a variety of systems with several vendors. There’s no need for excessive logistical efforts for training, therefore, reducing expenses

Barcoding, RFID tags, and serial numbers are used to monitor inventory throughout all stages of the supply chain allowing tracking of warehouse inventory, shelved items, and any item in transportation. This updated tracking system makes pick, pack and ship substantially superior.

Sharing a detailed analysis of a project for management becomes more manageable with an ERP by allowing you to set milestones for projects. With goals, dates, and filters, you can create a detailed project analysis and share it immediately.

Industry-specific ERP solutions can bring order to the chaos of an ever-changing industry. With the industry specialist-created software, an ERP can add comfort to managing the topmost worrisome items – food safety, cost reduction, consumer demand, and compliance and quality issues.

By Jarrod Kinchington, Infor ANZ managing director

This article was first published by Food & Drink Business