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Explained: Food and Beverage  ERP Software in the Cloud

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As food safety standards become stricter than ever and outbreak scandal upon scandal threaten food and beverage businesses, many wonder what the way forward may be for a food and beverage manufacturer looking to keep up with both customer satisfaction and FDA regulations in 2016. The answer: the cloud. Web-based enterprise solutions have been growing in popularity (particularly for SMBs) in the recent years, and that’s for good reason. Cloud ERP allows food and beverage manufacturers the flexibility of a cost per-user subscription model that be can grown at any time depending on the business’ trajectory. It can also provide a single source of truth for manufacturers who need to maintain extensive traceability data across multiple operations and plants—crucial if you need to have this kind of data on hand in any event of FDA recall or audit,

When you use cloud-based food and beverage ERP software, you inherently build this kind of flexibility and functionality into your business model. Read below for more on ERP hosted on the web and how it can be an invaluable tool for any food and beverage manufacturer. For even more info, fill out the form to the right for our free E-book for food and beverage manufacturers!

Food Safety Redefined

With ERP hosted through the web, you can take your food safety strategy in hand with more confidence than ever. On a cloud-based enterprise solution, users can instantly access records across any number of customers and contacts from a single database from any device with an internet connection. Even food packaging and wrapping businesses which produce materials for food distribution must maintain an equal depth of detail of their manufacturing processes as food producers.

The cloud delivery model can be an essential way for supply chains to increase visibility to the FDA and upstream partners. Documentation of the measurements can be transmitted within minutes over the web to any public requesting authorization. The resulting credibility can create an advantage for those supply chains and manufacturers over others in the industry. In addition, FDA incentives allow products to move through the demand chain much faster, resulting in surges of revenue with fewer errors. Within that ERP system you enforce checkpoints that must be cleared for every product before they continue down the line—be it temperature, pH or something else. If a product doesn’t pass that automated check, your ERP system will note it, stop the production and then alert anyone who has the necessary access in your web system. Process manufacturing can have several unique problems when it comes to quality control, but with ERP, these shouldn’t be able to trip you up.

Quality, Everywhere

Not only will cloud ERP help you toughen up on food traceability and quality standards, it will also allow you to regulate them across all of your production lines and processes—no matter where they happen.

Food and beverage ERP software based in the cloud will be your so-called ‘single source of truth’—accessible to all of your employees and stakeholders that have a device with an internet connection. You can enforce pictures of every raw material or product delivery so that everything is properly packed or locate the exact shipment an issue might have occurred. No matter the facility or warehouse, your cloud-based ERP will be accessible for your employees. The quality improvement will extend to your customer-facing work too: your sales people can walk into client meetings arm with real-time knowledge and inventory statistics. Imagine how impressed those clients will be when they can get accurate historical information on your operations, and definite, data-based estimates on costs, delivery and customization options.

Minimize All Costs

While cloud food and beverage ERP software will save you an untold amount of costs associated with quality breaches, recalls and possible FDA shutdowns, it can also save you huge amounts of costs in the present.

Despite a company’s best efforts, there are often other unforeseen production issues such as anomalistic weather patterns, supplier non-conformance and production bottleneck that can affect your short-term revenue. Plant operations can be highly seasonal and depend on the growth cycle of various crops. Authorized business users may need to configure recipes to carry on production in the event of these scenarios. With web-based food and beverage ERP software, users can manage configured BOMs and linked manufacturing processes and then track their relationship with items, ingredients and finished products within the production processes. The configurator allows users to automate the process routing of configured products, drive the purchase of components and productions of final products and codify unique business rules for each process; reducing waste on every line and handing over the rote work to your software and machinery so that your workers can invest their time in real value-adding activities.

So, Is Cloud Food and Beverage Manufacturing ERP Software For You?

Many food companies are at risk of a failed FDA audit and product recall due to outdated or disparate systems that are poorly suited to address new legislations and tighter restrictions. The FDA has reached a milestone with the ability to hold food companies accountable for the critical control and prevention measures within their operations.  And with recalls on the rise, those restrictions will only become tighter in the future. Food supply chains are now surrounded by an intense, but much needed overhaul of industry objectives and business processes. With increased federal regulation it’s important for food supply chain entities to look to more agile software and cloud options for their food and beverage ERP software to support business actions based in best practices and repeatable processes.

The cloud could just be the gateway for your food and beverage business to not only stay afloat in an ever more competitive industry, but to excel within it. Aside from it’s flexibility and scalability, it can also allow for any future you see for your business; whether it’s global growth or a diversification of production. No matter what you envision, the cloud can’t stop you.  If you should so decide that on-premise is right for you after a cloud implementation, then you have all of your necessary historical and operational data saved on your cloud servers to transfer onto a mixed onsite/web solution or a fully on-premise system.

For more advice on web-based food and beverage ERP software and whether it’s right for your business, download our free white paper on the topic above, or contact an expert at Datix today!