Old, heavily modified ERP systems that were implemented years, often decades ago. can no longer support the complex demands of the food and beverage industry. Keeping current isn't just smart - it's profitable. From cloud computing and collaborative technologies to mobility and analytics, technology holds the key to competitive advantage and growth. To remain relevant to the market and responsive to customer expectations, you need a roadmap to enable digital transformation.

To understand why it's important to evolve and utilize modern technology to transform your business, it is helpful to discus the business drivers facing food and beverage manufacturers today. While many of the high-level issues may seem like the same challenges the industry has been fighting for years, the specifics have evolved -requiring you to take a fresh look at your business and core competencies in order to determine the best path for the future.

Cloud technology offers the only platform that can provide the speed, scalability, global reach, and agility required by businesses seeking to embrace innovation. To succeed, you need to reposition the cloud within your organization, making it the fundamental element of your competitive strategy and embrace new methods of technical operations. Below is the introduction to CloudSuite Food & Beverage introduction.

Consumers want new fashion product, more variety, and the ability to make purchases whenever and wherever they choose.This is driving businesses to invest in digital transformation and fast-fashion. However companies running on legacy systems are  struggling to keep up  with the pace of change, while young and rapidly growing must take their first decisions about investing in enterprise software.

Infor CloudSuite Fashion delivers cloud on demand computing as a service with rich industry-specific functionality to cover your unique business needs. It's build specifically for apparel, footwear, home textile and fashion accessories companies and supports all your core processes whether you  manufacture, are a brand owner, or a private brand retailer. Infor CloudSuite Fashion can help you shorten time to consumer, seamlessly manage global operations, make your operations leaner, and profitably grow your business. 

With Infor CloudSuite Fashion your data is held in a secure and resilient environment, so that you can focus on running our business. You can count on our industry specific software to provide you with the same proven functionality, that is already helping hundreds of fashion customers worldwide, both on premise and on cloud.

Creating supply chain resiliency through more precise demand prediction.

An accurate demand prediction is one of the most critical elements of a resilient supply chain. When catastrophic events occur that can cause a massive shift in consumer behavior, retailers of all shapes and sizes are suddenly scrambling to adjust their forecasts. With the pandemic potentially forcing new or extended “shelter in place” orders, people will continue turning to new methods of receiving groceries, clothing, and other consumer products.

As we see different parts of the country and globe beginning to reopen, it’s possible many of these shopping behaviors may stick as people opt for less dining out due to new grocery shopping trends: pantry loading, working remotely, willingness to try private label, and a shift to new fulfillment channels.

As inventory levels drastically fluctuate, many shoppers have settled for what they (or their personalized shopper) can find, ultimately throwing brand loyalty out the window for cheaper brands, private labels, or store brands. Consumers have opted for new buying channels as well, ordering online and having groceries delivered. If the ease of these channels stick, it’s possible to see a long-term shift.

Food and beverage manufacturers need to take a fresh approach to how they do business. Why? Increasing consumer demand for greater product innovation and transparency, ever-increasing quality and compliance pressures, tighter profit margins, new channel opportunities, and a dynamic workforce are just some of the factors that are shifting market dynamics.

New Food Magazine hosted an Infor Webinar on how Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) can improve innovation.

During this webinar Keurig Dr Pepper provided a great customer case, where Bob Wimpfheimer told us how they needed a software solution that could help develop new products quickly, produce these products using the best possible formulas, and maintain full compliance with all regulatory requirements.

Additionally, the Webinar highlighted several areas where companies can find business evidence to justify their interest in PLM, here listed as questions:

In part one of this post we discussed the smartest ways to gain global visibility and respond to volatility in a food and beverage supply chain. And here in part two we will cover how to embrace the best technology. Addressing these key challenges can have a profound and positive impact on your entire supply chain—from procurement to manufacturing to delivery.

When you're looking at building a better foundation to address the challenges you may be facing within your overall organization, there's a number of solutions to consider. These aren't necessarily always the options that fall into what you’d expect to be a supply chain solution, but they all overlap within your overall supply chain and will help drive effectiveness and efficiency.

The first example is formula management. Many companies want to ascertain that it’s creating the right products for the right country as there may be limitations from a global perspective of where you can sell a product. Trying to manage this manually is challenging. Being able to respond to inquiries from customers and prospects around the globe requires quite a robust formula management solution.

Leading Infor partner Independent Computer Consulting Group (“ICCG”) is pleased to announce a new strategic partnership with CADTALK, the first and only software leveraging AI to transform engineering bills of material from virtually any CAD, PDM, or PLM application into manufacturing bills of material and routings inside Infor ERP applications, specifically Infor CloudSuite Industrial(SyteLine).

ICCG is an enterprise software focused consulting firm with a global presence and a track record of more than 2,000 business and digital transformation project executions across ERP, Supply Chain Planning and Execution Systems, Warehouse Management Solutions and Product Life Cycle Management Solutions deployments. 

“We are delighted to be partnering with Infor Gold Channel and Alliance Partner ICCG to provide CAD/PDM/PLM/CAM integration for Infor ERP,” said CADTALK Founder and CEO Scott Brickler.  “ICCG has a very strong domestic and international presence in the Infor ERP and PLM solutions market, and we are excited to bring the best CAD integration solution to more Infor ERP users globally. CADTALK is the go to CAD/PLM Integration solution for Infor CloudSuite Industrial (SyteLine) and we plan with support from strategic Partners like ICCG to extend our Integration to other Infor ERP solutions such as Infor M3 and Infor LN.”

Leading Infor partner Independent Computer Consulting Group (“ICCG”) is pleased to announce a new partnership with SPS Commerce, the world’s leading retail network. The partnership is expected to strengthen the ability of both companies to execute on digital transformation opportunities through engagement and delivery collaboration for the Infor portfolio of systems.

ICCG is an enterprise software focused consulting firm with a global presence and a track record of more than 2,000 business and digital transformation project executions across ERP, Supply Chain Planning and Execution Systems, Warehouse Management Solutions and Product Life Cycle Management Solutions deployments.

ICCG expects the SPS partnership to provide unique advantages, including access to the SPS Commerce network that includes more than 90,000 retail trading partners. The SPS retail network was built over 20 years by consistently adding customers who would rather trust their EDI operations to experts instead of trying to manage rapidly changing retailer requirements on their own.  

Food and beverage companies have long struggled with the unique requirements of shelf life management, complexities of batch scheduling, traceability, and many other factors. In addition, uncertainties around tariffs, sustainability initiatives, and growing regulations are some of a multitude of dynamics that will surely add even more complexity to the mix. Many of these issues and trends can have profound impact on your entire supply chain—from procurement to manufacturing to delivery.

Infor's Mike Edgett and Christine Barnhardt and I had the opportunity to discuss a number of challenges as it relates to supply chain complexities in the food and beverage industry. In the webinar, we segmented the challenges into three buckets; gain global visibility, predict and respond to volatility, and embrace the best technology.

We all tend to limit our focus to the variables within our control, however, it’s time to rethink all supply chain processes because they are not as efficient as they need to be. We did a survey of the companies that were on the Infor Nexus network, about two years ago, and what we found is that about 46% of them said that prior to implementing Infor Nexus it took them as long as three days to identify where a product were, and when it was going to be available. Very clearly the data is not available to help us make good decisions. On top of that, there are gaps for how manufacturers connect with customers, suppliers and carriers outside of the enterprise, whether it be multiple point-to-point EDI connections, portals, spreadsheets, emails—the list is almost endless—and very difficult to maintain.

The COVID-19 pandemic continues to ravage the health of individuals, communities, and economic sectors—and that includes retail establishments. Around the globe, in every country,normal life has changed dramatically, and we see the results in store closures (both temporary and permanent), employee layoffs, and people focused on and immediate essential needs. So we see apparel, shoes and non-essentials dropped down the list of purchasing priorities.

We already know that most retailers were under intense margin and revenue pressure before this crisis hit. Now one of the new financial burdens resulting from the pandemic is an abundance of inventory trapped throughout the supply chain. But, amidst this, there is still good news. If you are a retail business, there are a variety of options for you to work through these situational excesses. The optimal combination will depend on each retailer’s unique situation.

As the global economy slowly reopens, this timely blog from our partner, Info shares how retailers actually have 5 major opportunities for resolving their overstock issues.

Since 1983, Mitchell B. Chi, CPA, MBA, and General Manager - Enterprise Software, has worked with many Fortune 500 companies and hundreds of fast growth start-ups in designing low-cost agile business systems to stay ahead of the competition. He has authored numerous white papers, been a keynote speaker at national conferences, and continues to advise companies in building a “strategic vision with tactical results”.

Mitchell held executive positions with PriceWaterhouse, Goldman Sachs, Oracle, Infor, and 11 successful start-ups. A technology company he founded, MicroSage, won Small Business of the Year from the Small Business Administration. The next year MicroSage was awarded Minority Sub-contractor of the Year from the Department of Energy.

Mitchell is a dynamic and passionate speaker on many topics, especially how to stay relevant in today’s economy by empowering technology.

Q. The United States has depended on overseas manufacturing for many of our products which, in times like the current pandemic, has created a supply chain breakdown leading to stock out situations. In response to that do you think companies will focus on bringing more manufacturing back on shore to address this problem?

A. In the 1990’s, America sacrificed quality, availability, and brand loyalty for shareholder value, top line revenues, and acquisitions. The consumer was complicit in this, as they also sacrificed quality for price.

Fast forward to our current global quarantine and staying alive times. I believe the manufacturing reboot will be organic and with a huge “Buy America” movement, A.C. (After Corona). The US has a significant inventory of idle factories, the highest unemployment in history, and many families continue to be worried about basic commodities. Consider this: If there was a 10% increase due to “Buy America” that’s $2.15T of the US GDP of $21.47T. The trickle down could be as high as 5x or $10.75.2T from real estate (commercial and residential) renovations and durable goods to services and even, entertainment. 

Supply chains are the most fragile in the “first leg”, raw materials to finished product inventory. Currently, with supply chains stressed, US based, leading companies are developing plans to fortify as much of the “First Leg” back to America. The answer is not hard assets and labor alone. Flexible and agile technology is core to any tactical execution.