The Proof Is in the ERP: Mitigating Risks, Saving Money and Increasing Profits With Aptean

Here at Aptean, our teams have worked with many food and beverage companies like yours across the spectrum of product segments searching for solutions. We learn the ins and outs of their business operations and the common challenges they come up against, while working closely with their employees to find the right fit for their unique circumstances.

While we will always treat each case with the personalised care it deserves, we also know the value of having a high-level understanding of what our clients are looking to accomplish with the implementation of a food enterprise resource planning (ERP) system.

As such, we spoke with customers, as well as our own business development and product professionals, to get a more accurate picture of just what goals are most important for food and beverage organisations as they undergo a digital transformation.

As we dug deeper to find out what the most common considerations were for businesses putting a food ERP in place, we came to understand that businesses like yours are increasingly seeing such a cross-functional, unified system as a necessity for operations. Calculating a return on investment is rarely a top priority, as the solution is fundamental and not necessarily tied to specific financial benchmarks.

We also noticed in our conversations that three equally worthwhile aims—mitigating risks, saving money and increasing profits—were frequently mentioned when it came to goals for active pursuit. All are vital for excellence in operations and a healthy bottom line, so the next question to answer became just how Aptean Food & Beverage ERP helps our customers achieve these objectives.

Here, we dive into some of the ways that our platform drives results on these three critical fronts, including the following:

• Maintaining visibility and accessibility of data

• Providing real-time updates for reliable accuracy

• Automatically scheduling vital safety and quality checks

• Integrating with smart technologies, including sensors and scales

• Facilitating expansion of product lines with formula and recipe management tools

• Forecasting demand to optimise production approaches

Goal 1: Mitigating Risks

Risks come in many shapes and sizes for food and beverage companies, and there are several elements of our tailored ERP solution that help our clients head off these threats before they become problems.

First, when examining our offering at a fundamental level, we identified that the fully integrated and cross-functional nature of Aptean Food & Beverage ERP goes a long way in mitigating concerns, especially in the area of data integrity. By working on just one system that ties together all departments, as opposed to separate systems for finances and operations, an organisation can be assured that it is acting from a single source of truth and that all the numbers will add up at the end of the day.

A related but separate aspect that helps minimise mistakes and reduce errors is the real-time nature of the platform and its automated data capture functionalities. Members of our team pointed out the potential of our solution to flag an issue as soon as it occurs, allowing our clients’ teams to intervene and prevent the problem from reoccurring. This simply wouldn’t be possible if figures were only reviewed periodically, as by the time the numbers were scrutinised, it would already be too late to prevent negative impacts.

Another finding of our discussions is that working with a single provider improves continuity and coverage as opposed to working with multiple vendors for various systems used by different departments. After all, when a food and beverage business uses a variety of platforms across their teams, there’s more risk for disruption should the providers of those platforms experience outages, lack coverage for certain regions or product types, or even go out of business.

What’s more, the automatic scheduling of quality and compliance checks that our ERP for food businesses facilitates help to ensure that only satisfactory and completely safe products leave our clients’ facilities—greatly decreasing the chance of customer complaints and regulatory emergencies. The assured total traceability our system provides also gives users of our system end-to-end tracking capabilities, a big step in achieving supply chain excellence and a necessary part of total preparedness.

And finally, our robust inventory management features provide total visibility into ingredient levels and allow for automatic re-ordering, avoiding stock-outs at critical times.

Goal 2: Saving Money

When it comes to how Aptean Food & Beverage ERP helps clients save money, the experts on our teams pointed out that complete data capture and the built-in analytics tools of our system help root out inefficiencies and sources of waste. Without having the right metrics accessible, it can be impossible to know where losses are occurring, so that increased visibility is key.

This is part of a larger shift in thinking that occurs during a successful digital transformation, and that’s to look more at entire processes as opposed to individual tasks. Seeking out the root cause of an issue becomes possible when reporting is complete and executed in real time, as the red flags become quite apparent when a problem arises.

Preventing errors in this way also saves money on products that must be scrapped due to unacceptable quality, returns from unhappy customers and expensive rework production that would be necessitated by an entire run having a critical flaw that makes all of the goods in it invalid. The inventory management tools, meanwhile, help to ensure proper first-expiry, first-out (FEFO) picking, cutting back on spoiled materials that offer no return on the customer’s investment.

Customers spoke to the strength of putting a food ERP solution as a foundation for growth. Because such a platform leads our clients to focus more on optimising processes and efficiency, labour costs won’t have to grow in parallel with volume, as more can be done with less in terms of manpower and employees can concentrate on their most critical tasks.

Lastly, consider how the integrations with connected devices that Aptean Food & Beverage ERP offers can reduce the time it takes to perform certain procedures. With the right technology in place, these important steps will be taken care of correctly every time, but without our clients needing to expand their workforce.

Goal 3: Increasing Profits

While all of the ways in which our food and beverage ERP solution saves our clients money also help keep profitability high—after all, less money spent for the same output means healthier margins—there are additional ways that ERP drives a healthy bottom line.

One critical functionality of our system pointed out by our team members as a way to expand and capitalise on opportunities is the advanced recipe and formula tools. Our clients’ research and development teams can be empowered to experiment and iterate on new product concepts in high-demand categories, allowing for them to grab a share of a booming new market.

The demand forecasting capabilities of Aptean Food & Beverage ERP can also be leveraged to increase profits, as our customers can match production to suit seasonal surges and always be ready to meet the demands of consumers. And back on the subject of inventory management, the best practices on which we built our solution help keep optimal quantities in stock, ensuring clients can use what they’ve purchased and get the full expected return.

The advanced analytics mentioned earlier are also a way in which greater profits can be achieved. By scrutinising what’s making the most money and what might need to be reconsidered or scrapped altogether, our customers can optimise their product lineup to suit their financial goals.

A Partner Dedicated to Your Success

A final note on how our food and beverage ERP solution mitigates risk, saves money and increases profits is more a truth about our business itself. Our combined decades of experience make us a reliable, knowledgeable partner for your business from initial discussions and preliminary implementation planning to full deployment.

Our dependable IT teams and redundant servers for cloud customers ensure maximum uptime of the system, too, reducing the chances of an outage and keeping operations humming along at full speed so that production continues according to targets and all orders can be fulfilled. With dependable support, you can rest assured that should a problem arise, we’ll be quick to respond and work through the issue.

We also have the rock-solid base of Microsoft Dynamics 365, which means that our offerings are always up to date and on the cutting edge of technology. Users with experience in any of Microsoft’s many popular applications and programs will immediately be familiar with the interface, and we will continue to push the latest developments from our technology partner to our products so that all possible tools are at our clients’ fingertips.

For example, our food and beverage ERP is embedded with advanced artificial intelligence capabilities to help your business improve demand forecasting, data quality, automation and efficiency. So you're not just reacting to the challenges of your industry, you're driving innovation and future-proofing your success.

Nearly every aspect of the design of Aptean Food & Beverage ERP was purpose-built to help companies like yours avoid common pitfalls, reduce costs and drive more revenue. That’s why so many food and beverage businesses see our system as a foundation for cross-functional operations and absolutely critical to success in competitive marketplaces.

Want to grab a slice of that pie for yourself? Contact our experts today for a quick chat about how our purpose-built food software can benefit your business, or request a personalised demo.