Why Your Fresh Produce Business Needs a Specialized Produce ERP

Fresh produce businesses like yours face a variety of challenges that are completely unique to the sector. As an industry professional, you know well the hurdles that the growers, packers and distributors of the world must clear to compete in this dynamic and complex marketplace.

As such, you may be on the lookout for improvements that can help you better manage these fresh produce-specific concerns. Enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems can be a great fit for organizations that want to take a significant step forward in their digital transformation, but simply shopping around and picking the one that “feels right” isn’t going to cut it for your situation.

Put simply, that’s because a generic ERP platform won’t have all the tools that your company needs. You need a produce ERP—that is, a solution built with purpose and designed for fresh produce companies like yours, complete with the functionalities necessary to tackle your biggest concerns. 

So, what specifically should you be looking for in a produce ERP?

ERP Features for Fresh Produce Businesses

When it comes to evaluating ERP systems and their fit with your operations, you need to identify your critical processes, how they can be improved and what results you’re hoping to achieve. That should help you weed out the offerings that simply won’t suit your needs.

Here are some of the fresh produce-specific tools that you should keep an eye out for during your evaluation process: 

• Unparalleled supply chain visibility – You need a complete view of the movement of your materials at every stop, from source to consumer and all critical tracking points (CTPs) along the way. A fresh produce ERP will allow you to collect and maintain all necessary product movement details in one integrated database.

• Excellent quality control measures – A produce ERP can help you harness the power of automation by implementing prompts to alert your users to conduct all required quality checks. You’ll also have complete control and visibility over the inspection status of your produce so your company’s food quality control requirements will always be met.

• Uncompromising traceability tools – It’s vital you always know where your produce came from and where it’s headed, as well as what condition it’s in along the way. With a produce ERP, you’ll be prepared in case of withdrawal or audit—all relevant records will be ready at a moment’s notice for ultimate peace of mind. You can even keep track of inventory by grouping items and pallets with license plate numbers and assigning serial shipping container codes (SSCC), which ensures pallet data is correct. With this, you secure greater inventory traceability.

• Watertight recall functionality – This allows you to quickly trace and identify affected products through detailed batch and lot tracking. During a recall, a produce ERP enables you to pinpoint the source of contamination or defect and trace the distribution path of the affected products so you can promptly notify all relevant parties, including suppliers, distributors and customers.

• Robust inventory and warehouse management – Produce ERP ensures efficient inventory management and smart purchasing by providing real-time stock visibility, crucial for handling perishable goods. It even integrates commodity harvest planning to predict and schedule harvests based on market demand, crop readiness and weather conditions, reducing any potential losses.

• Enhanced consignment capabilities – This feature allows you to trace a consignment of produce from intake through shipment. You’ll always have all of the details on quality, configuration and costs at the touch of a button. The granularity of this information will also help you get precise cost tracking figures so that you can price your goods accordingly.

• Grower/producer portal – Get a complete picture of producer activities and take advantage of collaborative planning modules that capture quality view, pack out view and shipment notifications. With the right system, you can even access important contract information easily directly through the interface.

• Advanced projection tools – Preparing for the future is key, so having reliable demand forecasts, as well as models that can use weather data to project your production, is critical. With that information at your fingertips, you can make decisions with confidence based on accurate estimations.

• Farm administration functions – Keep tabs on the ownership and activity of parcels of land, including the crops grown there, to make sure your sourcing records are as accurate as possible. And easily integrate with all facilities so that you have a clear understanding of their assets and forecasts in real time.

• Full mobile access – Mobile access enables seamless operations and faster decision-making by allowing employees to input and retrieve data anywhere—on-site, on the road, in the field or at the farm. They can track information from any location using any device. To accommodate unreliable internet in remote areas, the system automatically updates offline-collected data once connectivity is restored.

• Flexible packaging – The storage, sale and transport of perishable products should not be overlooked. Produce ERP software accommodates your processes by helping you better handle the packing of a variety of different produce. It can be used for single products, like fresh-cut vegetables, or to consolidate a bulk product, like cardboard boxes on a pallet.

• Compliance and regulations – With an industry-specific produce ERP you can manage, track, store and retrieve critical documents and digital files like regulatory and financial forms. Plus, you can maintain electronic records and even digitize paper documents, so all your compliance documents are to hand and food safety is optimized.

• Quality certification – Gain end-to-end traceability of quality certificates for every lot across your entire supply chain. This feature can easily and accurately assign all relevant certificates to lots in order to minimize compliance issues and ensure products meet regulatory standards.

• Enhanced trade management – With trade management and advanced pricing functionalities, working out mutually beneficial pricing agreements between you and your clients becomes easy. A sophisticated produce ERP helps you increase profitability by enabling you to design individual trade plans for each trade agreement while accommodating various trade rate configurations within a single plan.

• Expiration and shelf-life management – Food expiration timelines present a big challenge—any product not sold before expiration is wasted. Produce ERP software allows you to categorize stock by shelf life and implement a first-expiry, first-out (FEFO) approach for selecting and utilizing ingredients so you have time to execute actions to prevent stock from expiring or losing value.

• Grower accounting – Fresh foods are notorious for their variability, and no two products are the same. This creates a challenge when determining a valid purchase price for your supplier. However, produce ERP can calculate purchase prices based on “grade out” and “pack out” accounting methods, analyzing all relevant data to generate a figure so you know your prices are accurate.

The Aptean Advantage

If you’re looking for a produce ERP that checks all of these boxes, you need not look far—our industry-specific fresh produce ERP delivers everything you need. Designed by a team of industry experts who know the challenges that fresh produce businesses like yours face, it comes with all of the above features out of the box. This means you don’t have to waste time, effort and money customizing a general solution to your needs. Instead, you can be up and running in no time, gaining benefits from day one and ROI as quickly as possible.

Our seamless implementation process ensures minimal disruption to your operations, allowing you to focus on what you do best—delivering quality produce to your customers.

Don’t settle for a generic system that only covers some of your bases. Get the edge on the competition by choosing a platform that will have you prepared for the future, no matter what it may hold.

Reach out to us today to learn more about what Aptean’s best-in-class offerings can do for your fresh produce organization.