4 Reasons to Modernize Your Business with Purpose-Built Software for the Food Industry

Philosopher and physician John Locke is credited with the quote, “Things of this world are in so constant a flux, that nothing remains long in the same state.”

Despite the fact that the legendary Englishman passed at the beginning of the 18th century, his words ring truer than ever today—particularly in the food and beverage industry. In this already dynamic industry, shifting consumer tastes, tougher traceability legislation and an increased emphasis on sustainability are all driving significant change.

What will it take for your business to keep up? A flexible, proactive and future-focused company culture is a good place to start, as without that, you’ll face too many internal barriers to make substantial progress. More importantly, though, you need to embrace bespoke technology and engage in a thorough, well-devised digital transformation initiative.

We know that, depending upon the current state of your tech stack, that may not be a small ask, but it’s nonetheless essential for your organization’s success. In this post, we’ll demonstrate why that’s the case by covering the four most compelling reasons to modernize your operations with purpose-built software for the food industry.

1. Establishing a Foundation with a Single, Cross-Functional Solution

In the past, many food and beverage businesses accepted the fact that because the needs of their different departments were so distinct, each would have their own system and processes for getting work done. After all, production is pretty far-removed from marketing, which is quite different from finance—the examples are evident.

Simply put, though, such an approach won’t cut it in today’s fast-paced marketplace. Your employees need a single source of truth in order to make agile and fully informed decisions, and they can’t waste time with duplicate data entry and information siloes. And the fact of the matter is that in food and beverage organizations, no functions can be carried out in a vacuum—all are connected.

That’s why the new gold standard for companies like yours is an enterprise resource planning (ERP) solution designed specifically for the food and beverage industry. By offering the necessary features and tools for all of your teams and unifying your facts and figures in a central database, such a system acts as a “single source of truth” for all of your staff.

2. Achieving Real-Time Visibility for Critical Information

In an environment as busy and complex as a food and beverage factory floor, the time delay between manual data collection and updates being reflected in the system of record can be a liability. Everyone needs to know that the information displayed on the screen is accurate and up-to-date in order to get their jobs done, so a lag introduces uncertainty where there can be none.

By integrating with handheld barcode scanners, connected sensors and other electronic manufacturing equipment, ERP software for the food industry helps you achieve the real-time visibility your operations so vitally need. When operators have confidence that the numbers on the screen are indeed the latest readings, they feel empowered to modify plans as necessary and keep moving forward.

An added benefit of trusting to more automated means of data capture is eliminating the chance of human error. Personnel in a rush to complete all checks and measurements in a short time frame might scribble an ambiguous figure or miskey an important entry, which could have serious repercussions down the line—so it’s best to relieve them of the burden with technology to suit the responsibility.

3. Leveraging Scalability to Facilitate Growth

Your organization’s goals for the future likely involve some kind of growth or expansion—striving for greater revenue, higher volume, possibly additional facilities or new products—all worthwhile pursuits. If your existing business systems are only designed to handle the current scope of your business, though, you’ll be severely limited in your ability to reach those milestones.

For this reason, you need to not only move beyond outdated legacy systems but also prioritize scalability in the modern solutions you choose to implement. Aptean Food & Beverage ERP certainly delivers on this front, accommodating operations of all sizes and allowing for the roll-out of additional features and modules as your company’s needs evolve.

What’s more, Aptean has a complete suite of industry-specific software, and each platform complements ERP technology to offer extra competitive advantages. For example, our overall equipment effectiveness (OEE) solution for food and beverage businesses helps you get the most out of your machinery and personnel, while Aptean EAM for the food and beverage industry facilitates excellent equipment upkeep practices to keep downtime and cost of ownership to a minimum.

To further build out your complete tech stack, we also offer a full lineup of transportation management systems for food distribution, including Aptean Routing & Scheduling. And it doesn’t stop there—Aptean Business Intelligence uses machine learning to track KPIs and unlock actionable insights, whereas Aptean Electronic Data Interchange (EDI) for streamlines your data transfers.

4. Taking Advantage of the Cloud and Other Emergent Technology

Many exciting new technological developments have emerged in recent years, and among the most significant is cloud computing. Freed from the necessity of investing in on-site servers and other costly equipment to leverage the latest solutions, food and beverage businesses like yours have more options and greater flexibility than ever before.

Deploying your own cloud ERP system is a smart move in no small part thanks to the fact that it can be more affordable than an on-premise implementation—there's no need to purchase additional hardware when the system is hosted and maintained by your provider on remote servers.

Partnering with an innovative software supplier like Aptean will have you up-to-speed and ready for what’s next, no matter what may come. Our cloud solution has the additional benefit of offering 99.9% uptime or better, and with all updates applied automatically, you never have to worry about whether or not you're working with the latest version.

Aptean: The Leader in Software for the Food Industry

The reasons we’ve covered above have hopefully impressed upon you the urgent and imperative nature of digital transformation for food and beverage businesses. That being said, as you begin your exploration and attempt to determine your optimal path to fully modernized operations, you’ll likely find yourself inundated with options and curious as to what distinguishes the cream of the crop.

Aptean and our food and beverage ERP should be at the top of your list of providers and solutions to consider, in no small part to our decades of collective experience and in-depth understanding of the unique challenges that today’s food and beverage companies face post-pandemic. Our system comes with features that every organization can use—including bidirectional traceability, inventory control and quality management—as well as sector-specific tools for catch weight management, consignment tracking and more.

Our solution also took home Frost and Sullivan’s 2022 Product Leadership Award in North American ERP Software for the Food and Beverage Industry, which stands as a testament to how our dedicated professionals have built the system optimally and with an eye for the future. And an additional benefit of our aforementioned cloud deployments is remarkable reliability—system uptime is 99.9% or more for the majority of our clients.

Finally, consider that our food and beverage ERP entails unique, industry-specific technologies built on the Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central platform, which lends it familiarity to employees who use other Microsoft programs and make the user experience seamless and intuitive. With these points in our favor, the advantages to partnering with Aptean should be clear.

Now, if you’re ready to hear more about Aptean and our purpose-built software for the food industry, contact us today. We also welcome you to request a personalized demo at your convenience.