June 24, 2021

5 Signs Your Food Business Needs an ERP Platform

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Investing in ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning) requires looking at every aspect of your business and every process in your company to choose and integrate the new system into them. This can be challenging, therefore food businesses often dismiss the need for an ERP platform or ERP system software.

But if your company is growing, you most certainly will need a tool to manage it properly soon enough. Or maybe you already need one?

5 signs your food business needs ERP business software

If all the above applies to your business, you are in need of an ERP.

It is hard for you to manage traceability and shelf life

A problem, specific to the food business, is related to food traceability and certain shelf life. This industry has strict standards, which are hard to follow without proper visibility.

A paper-based, manual traceability process is difficult to maintain on the proper level when the turnovers are high. It also brings a lot of stress, when some problems arise, and you need to recall the problematic product lots.

ERP solutions provide “farm-to-fork” traceability, thus you can complete backward traceability for any of your products quickly and efficiently.

Another thing that leads to product recalls is poor shelf-life management. The product can get to the shelf near the expiration date or even after. ERP platform manages expiry dates and helps you to get your product to the customer fresh.

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You have different applications for different processes or your software is outdated

If every department of your company uses different applications in their processes, you need an ERP platform. When the accounting team uses one platform for invoices, sales representatives enter sales in the other one, and warehouse employees use yet another software for managing inventory, it creates unnecessary obstacles between processes.

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The missing connection between the systems leads to low productivity, high processing time, and poor communication. It can also be the cause of poor quality of production due to the lack of unified standards.

On the other hand, using outdated software doesn’t help to speed up the processes. In fact, it does exactly the opposite. So if you are still using first-generation ERP, it’s time to get updated.

Modern ERP software solutions for food companies fine-tune the many processes that your business has to work as a whole. Having one platform for all departments brings real-time data visibility and automates the tasks according to established standards.

You are lacking information about your performance

Without ERP technologies, your data is hard to manage, because it is either on paper or in different applications.

When you lack access to your performance, like sales margins, production numbers, financial data, and other business information, it affects your decision-making abilities. Without the ability to make informed decisions, you will not be ready for business problems and will lose opportunities to grow.

Implementing an ERP platform in your work makes all your data visible by storing it in one place. ERPs also help to identify problematic areas of your business and stay within the budget. And visual representation in dashboards and charts makes the process easier and more eye-pleasing.

Another bonus point: your reports at the end of the year will no longer take a whole month to accomplish and will be done automatically.

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You have inaccurate inventory information

Food stock is changing rapidly all the time. So to track it manually by filling paper-based forms is an almost impossible task, especially when your business is growing. It is time-consuming and prone to mistakes and inaccuracies.

This leads to over- and understocking, high operational costs, and an inability to predict supply and demand or make promotions. It also makes calculating costs and losses hard to do.
If your inventory numbers differ and never add up to what you expected them to be, it is time for ERP solutions. This will reduce the number of manual work, thus reducing operational costs, minimizing the time spent on stock management, and making your inventory numbers clear and precise.

Your customer satisfaction is declining

If the above problems ring a bell to you, unfortunately, you will soon be flooded with customer complaints, if not already.

Customers want simplicity in getting their food. When they go to the store, they expect your products to already be there, not an empty shelf with the “soon to arrive” tag. Finding that they bought expired products will also definitely make them upset with your brand.

An upset customer is less likely to repeat a purchase, especially if your client service representatives won’t make it up to the customers in some way. This will lead to profit losses and a bad reputation, which is especially hard to mend.

ERP solutions get rid of delays and other occurring problems by streamlining the processes, which in turn helps to build a better relationship with your customers.

5 Signs Your Food Business Needs an ERP Platform - 12
The food business has lots of processes and complex data driving from them. As an all-in-one solution, an ERP platform is what keeps everything together so that you can have a clear vision of your company’s work.

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Coreteka has reliable experience in the agrifood market. If you have problems that need to be fixed or just want to improve the overall performance of your food business, contact us!