How PLM Software Drives Innovation in the Food, Beverage, Cosmetics and Personal Care Industries

Product innovation isn’t exclusively the territory of new start-ups and marketplace disruptors—it’s a vital practice for every business that manufactures goods for consumers. And it’s especially important in the dynamic food, beverage, cosmetics and personal care industries, as shoppers expect these items to be tuned to their needs and preferences, not to mention the trends of the day.

Top decision-makers realize this truth, as according to McKinsey research, 84% of executives believe that innovation is critical to their organization’s future success. That said, the same study found that only 6% of those same C-suite respondents were satisfied with their company’s innovation performance, which begs the question of how manufacturers can facilitate the process and promote better new product development (NPD) outcomes.

A separate McKinsey report would seem to have found the answer, at least at a base level. The research and consulting firm reports that by digitally enabling innovation with new technology, consumer packaged goods (CPG) businesses can bring new products to market 50% faster, at a third lower cost and with double the return on investment (ROI).

We’re here to fill in the “how” behind this concept, including the ideal solution for driving innovation, a purpose-built product lifecycle management (PLM) system. Our new whitepaper, 3 Key Ways PLM Software Facilitates Innovation in the Food, Beverage, Cosmetics and Personal Care Industries goes deep on the topic by exploring it from the vantage of three critical functional areas.

This blog post should whet your appetite for that resource as a high-level overview. So, read on for a quick summary, or download the full whitepaper for free now.

1. Managing Data via a “Single Source of Truth”

Accuracy and accessibility of data is crucial in NPD efforts, as there are many variables to tune, test results to review and exacting product requirements to match as projects progress through the pipeline. The document and specification management features of PLM software can help tremendously on this front, digitizing your information and helping everyone operate from the same “playbook.”

What’s more, intuitive indexing and searching tools make finding the facts and figures you’re looking for much easier, putting them just a few keystrokes or clicks away. Aptean PLM Lascom Edition also offers dedicated product brief adherence functionality, which helps to ensure that your finished goods deliver on their unique value propositions by deploying automatic alerts when deviations from the original brief are detected.

2. Offering Tools for Product Development

When it comes to creating, iterating and perfecting your new offerings, you need tools developed specifically for the task at hand and with the nuances of food, beverage, cosmetics and personal care items in mind. An industry-specific PLM solution will have you covered here, with recipe and formulation features that make dialing in your products’ parameters a simpler and less time-intensive matter.

Aptean PLM Lascom Edition really shines in this area thanks to automatic generation of Product Information Files (PIFs) and component management capabilities with built-in integrations for the USDA National Nutrient, CIQUAL and INCI repositories. And beyond that, our software also offers robust labeling and packaging functionalities that streamline those critical steps and help position your finished goods for success in stores.

3. Acting as a Platform for Collaboration

Teamwork is of utmost importance during the NPD process, as you need the expertise and the active engagement of multiple professionals representing various disciplines to bring a cohesive and attractive product to market. For that reason, PLM platforms offer system-wide commenting features to facilitate clear communication and help ensure that everyone’s viewpoint receives consideration.

The supplier portal of Aptean PLM Lascom Edition extends the opportunity for collaboration to external partners, allowing vendors to feed details on components and packaging elements directly into your system, which is more efficient compared to manual entry and less error-prone. Our PLM software’s robust workflow engine also helps project managers keep development moving along, enabling them to identify bottlenecks and balance workloads using easy-to-read Gantt charts.

Top Reasons to Trust Aptean for Your PLM Needs

We’ve touched on the main points of our full whitepaper in this post and highlighted several of the strengths of our PLM solution tailored to the food, beverage, cosmetics and personal care industries. Still, there’s more to know about Aptean, our approach and the ecosystem of solutions that we offer, and these factors combined are what make ours a name to trust among the many software vendors on the market.

For starters, there’s our talented team’s collective decades of experience in the broader process manufacturing world, as well as the niches that comprise it. That includes sub-verticals within the spaces called out above, which has allowed our specialists to develop a deep understanding of the unique challenges that businesses like yours face and the best practices to overcome them.

We take that a step further with our partner-like mindset during rollout of your solution, which entails assistance with creating a realistic timeline and observable milestones to keep your deployment on track. Our dedicated implementation and service professionals help to smooth out the process with flexible, phase-based plans in situations where a full-fledged installation from the get-go wouldn’t be feasible.

Beyond that, Aptean PLM Lascom Edition is also cloud-ready, so it can be deployed on the Software as a Service (SaaS) model for greater flexibility, enhanced data protection, stronger cybersecurity and fewer hardware requirements. And we offer a lot more than just PLM for—we also have leading process manufacturing solutions for enterprise resource planning (ERP), overall equipment effectiveness (OEE), enterprise asset management (EAM) and more.

Finally, consider our high ranking on The Software Report’s Power 500 Software Companies of 2023, which stands as a testament to our products’ quality, performance and reliability, not to mention the level of service we offer. Aptean came in at the 30th overall spot to place in the top 10% of businesses included, putting us in the upper echelon of providers.

Now, if you’re ready to learn more about Aptean PLM Lascom Edition and how it can facilitate innovation at your business, contact us. You can also request a personalized demo.

And don’t forget to download the full whitepaper for free today.