How Food Manufacturing ERP Software Improves Data Visibility and Boosts Results

The rapid proliferation of data today is truly staggering, as some 2.5 quintillion bytes are created each day. All told, there are already more than 44 zettabytes (equivalent to 44 trillion gigabytes) of data in the “digital universe,” but even that pales in comparison to the projected 180 zettabytes that we will have collectively produced by 2025.

And it’s not all just zeroes and ones—there’s dollars and cents at play, too, with research by Statista indicating that the value of the global big data analytics market will top $655 billion by 2029. That demonstrates that businesses around the world are keen to invest in and extract insights from the facts and figures that their operations generate, as well as those they receive from consumers.

So what does all this mean to you as a food and beverage manufacturing professional? Firstly, it should impress upon you that if your company isn’t already actively using data to inform strategic decision-making, you risk missing out on potentially significant opportunities for improvement. And beyond that, it’s probably clear that with so much new information coming your way every day, trying to keep track of it all with paper-based records or simple digital spreadsheets just won’t cut it.

Thankfully, though, there’s a better way to go about managing your data, and that’s by using purpose-built solutions, specifically enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems. These cross-functional platforms help organizations like yours establish a “single source of truth” for critical information, update it in real time and access it easily via a user-friendly interface.

Industry-specific food manufacturing ERP software takes this a step further, as it’s even better suited for the needs of your company. That’s because it comes packed with specialized functionalities that help your staff navigate the unique challenges of the sub-vertical markets while also making relevant data highly visible for folks on the factory floor as well as the key stakeholders in the C-suite.

Read on to discover how advanced ERP software for food manufacturers—like our own solution, Aptean Food & Beverage ERP—can help keep your business’s information at employees’ fingertips and thereby drive better outcomes in four key operational areas.

Features for Supply Chain Visibility

The lot and sublot management functionalities of food and beverage ERP systems can provide your business with full bidirectional traceability all the way down to the individual item level. With these features, you can flexibly assign lot numbers, split larger lots into smaller sublots without losing traceability data and tie important details like country of origin, production date and more to your goods.

Aptean Food & Beverage ERP is designed to be compatible with commonly used lot definition methods like license plating and serial shipping container codes (SSCCs) out of the proverbial box, further extending the software’s utility in this area and making it easier to work with the traceability information that suppliers pass along to you.

Associated Benefits

The features described above can help your business maintain a complete, accurate and up-to-date picture of your supply chain, so you know both where your products have been and where they’re headed. That also facilitates withdrawals and recalls should they be necessary, as you can quickly determine the origin of the affected goods and where they ended up downstream.

Plus, you’ll be better able to provide consumers with the transparency that they expect from food and beverage companies today and thereby potentially bolster brand reputation.

Features for Quality and Food Safety Visibility

Dedicated quality control tools are a key component of any food and beverage ERP worth considering, as they facilitate the completion of crucial checks for adherence to standards and make the results of those procedures eminently accessible. Plus, thanks to the real-time nature of these solutions, the findings are reflected in the system right away, allowing for quick intervention in case of an issue.

Our software builds upon those functionalities further with inspection status features that make it easy to tell at a glance what checks still need to be taken care of, as well as non-conformance reporting to document and address issues quickly. Also useful on this front are compliance document management capabilities for dealing with regulatory forms and product specification tools for the identification of allergens.

Associated Benefits

Having the features you need to ensure the quality of your products helps your organization boost customer satisfaction and encourage repeat purchasing, which can in turn drive greater revenue. You’ll also have greater assurance of regulatory compliance with the pertinent records to display due diligence available in a convenient digital format.

What’s more, with all of your materials with allergen concerns flagged appropriately, you can be more confident that all of your goods are safe for consumers with sensitivities and decrease the chances that your company ends up in the headlines for the wrong reasons.

Features for Inventory Visibility

Trading board features of food manufacturing ERP software can give you up-to-date figures on both expected and available stock across all of your locations and let you assign lots to specific orders. Meanwhile, production planning functionalities assist in your efforts to align supply with demand precisely by allowing for the side-by-side comparison of inventory with sales orders.

Of course, for food and beverage manufacturers there’s still the matter of accounting for the perishable nature of the products in your inventory—and for that, Aptean Food & Beverage ERP has robust expiration management tools. With these on your side, you’ll be able to configure your timeframes according to the shelf lives of your materials, use first-expiry, first-out (FEFO) picking methods and deploy alerts when ingredients are approaching the end of their range of viability.

Associated Benefits

By finely tuning your stock levels to consumer demand, you’ll be able to maintain more optimal amounts and reduce food waste that results from spoilage—which would represent both a financial loss and a setback in your sustainability efforts. You’ll have the inventory you need to capitalize on sales opportunities without accruing excessive carrying costs.

Beyond that, it’s worth emphasizing again how important it is that you keep waste to a minimum if your company has a goal to make your operations more sustainable. In the U.S. alone, between 30 and 40% of all edible food ends up in landfills, but technology like ERP software can help your business combat this issue.

Features for Financial, KPI and CRM Visibility

Wrapping your head around how well your processes are performing and how your results are affected by changes in operations is the first step toward unlocking improvements, and there’s no better tool for getting actionable insights out of your data than business intelligence (BI) functionality. Aptean Food & Beverage ERP’s integrated BI features can help you track more than 500 key performance indicators (KPIs), 300 of which are specific to the food and beverage industry.

Our software also offers customer relationship management (CRM) features that help you keep track of interactions with clients and better understand their needs. These help keep contact details, order histories and records of communications highly visible.

Associated Benefits

By getting a firm grasp on where your KPIs sit and how certain variables can influence them, you can make smarter strategic decisions that lead to a boost for your bottom line. Our BI features also allow you to model scenarios before you choose to enact certain changes and can thereby give you greater assuredness that your actual outcomes are as intended.

On the sales side, the CRM functionalities will help your staff be more productive and serve customers both more efficiently and more effectively. That, in turn, will encourage brand loyalty and repeat purchasing, which promote better profitability for your organization.

Why Aptean Is Your Go-To Provider for Food and Beverage Software

Hopefully this post has impressed upon you the value of data visibility in the food and beverage markets, as well as the ways in which ERP software for food manufacturers provides that visibility across multiple operational areas. We know that there are plenty of options out there in terms of solutions providers, so we’d like to share a few reasons why Aptean is considered a name to trust in the space.

The list begins with our dedicated professionals’ extensive experience in the food and beverage worlds, which has allowed them to develop an in-depth understanding of the unique challenges that businesses like yours face, as well as the best practices for overcoming them. Our team really “speaks your language” and can offer advice on how to navigate the complexities by using Aptean solutions.

We also offer flexible cloud deployments on the Software as a Service (SaaS) model and encourage this implementation method for customers interested in greater scalability, stronger cybersecurity and enhanced data protection. Such setups also require little to no additional hardware, making them less of a burden on your IT and facilities staff.

Aptean Food & Beverage ERP also shines due to the fact that it incorporates unique industry-specific technology on the Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central platform, making it easy to use. Finally, consider that we were ranked at the 30th overall spot on The Software Report’s Power 500 Software Companies in 2023, which put us in the top 10% of organizations included and is a further testament to the quality and performance of our systems.

So, if you’re ready to learn more about our food manufacturing ERP software and how it can provide your company with the data visibility you need to succeed, reach out to us today. You can also request a personalized demo.