Part 2: Navigating High Inflation and Interest Rates in the Food & Beverage Industry

Inflation and interest rates are casting a significant shadow over the food and beverage industry, profoundly impacting various aspects of operations. Prices for ingredients, packaging, energy, transportation, and labor have surged, translating into higher consumer prices. As a result, consumers are shifting towards lower-priced alternatives, posing challenges for manufacturers. Those equipped with robust insights and cost agility are weathering the storm better, while others grapple with shrinking margins.

Amidst this economic turbulence, regulators have responded by significantly increasing interest rates to curb inflation. However, this move has further strained smaller businesses and startups, grappling with the high cost of capital. Consequently, the industry landscape is witnessing a scenario where larger enterprises dominate, consuming smaller players struggling to stay afloat.

Part 1: The Adoption of Technology in Food & Beverage

In today's rapidly evolving food and beverage industry, adopting technology is not just a choice but a necessity for businesses aiming to stay competitive and efficient. From AI and machine learning to enterprise automation and IoT, technological advancements are reshaping how companies operate, engage with customers, and manage their supply chains.

The Role of Technology in Business Transformation

Leading food & beverage sector businesses embrace a digital-first approach to drive growth and streamline operations. This includes leveraging technologies such as artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning (ML), generative AI, enterprise automation, IoT (Internet of Things), and Industry 4.0 solutions to enhance productivity, optimize processes, and deliver superior customer experiences.

Partner Spotlight: Info's OS Technology Platform

Our partner, Infor, with its innovative OS technology platform, is at the forefront of this technological revolution. Info has been instrumental in helping food & beverage businesses harness the power of cutting-edge technologies to unlock new opportunities and overcome operational challenges.

How Info is Empowering Businesses

Infor's OS technology platform offers tailored solutions designed to meet the specific needs of food and beverage companies. By leveraging AI and machine learning, Info enables businesses to analyze vast amounts of data in real time, gaining actionable insights to optimize production, predict demand, and enhance supply chain efficiency.

By Christine Dominski, ICCG Senior Business Consultant

Do you find yourself searching for Information through multiple Excel files? How about Teams or SharePoint sites? Do you struggle with managing approvals or reviews?

Maybe it is time for a Product Life Cycle Management System (PLM).

Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) is the process by which Research and Development innovate new products and manage quality throughout the product lifecycle to ensure the highest level of consumer satisfaction and shareholder value.

PLM systems wrap around Business Strategies and Product Portfolios to help coordinate information and collaboration across an organization. The process of generating product ideas, all the way to product retirement, can be managed in a PLM system. Manage Suppliers, Items (ingredients), Formulas (recipes), Label and Project information, all in one place. Record approvals at every step of the way to provide audit trails.

Product Lifecycle Management affords the peace of mind that all data is managed and reported as required by your organization. A PLM system allows you to control User access to the information as needed for your business success. Integration with ERP systems and a data lake are available. Use the data lake to feed E-Commerce initiates or other internal systems used for reporting.

By Christine Dominski, ICCG Senior Business Consultant

Have you ever wondered if a Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) system is right for your business? Is the Business Value unclear? No matter the size of your business, a Product Lifecycle Management system can provide insights and discipline to a Company's process. Let’s provide clarity on the business value.

Standardize Business Processes – By understanding what makes your business tick, you can standardize the processes in a system to maximize efficiency. Once you maximize efficiency, you can realize a quicker time to market with new approval processes tailored to your needs.

In today’s highly technical, data-driven fashion environment, the limited functionality of spreadsheets and other outdated, manual-entry tools often result in significant time lags, data inaccuracies, linear sequential processes, and an inability to integrate with shared data libraries. When the greatest asset a fashion manufacturers can have is getting new ideas to consumers quickly, manufacturers can’t afford to let technology slow them down.

That’s why fashion companies need Infor CloudSuite™ PLM for Fashion—a modern, product lifecycle
management (PLM) solution that can handle the fast-paced demands of a 21st-century fashion business. It can help brands develop new styles with increased speed, greater flexibility, and more consistent quality.

Based in the cloud, CloudSuite PLM for Fashion lets you work from anywhere, on virtually any device.Innovate faster. Infor CloudSuite PLM for Fashion is a powerful PLM and collaboration platform that can help fashion manufacturers and their value chain partners innovate faster, make processes more efficient, and easily share information. As a result, fashion manufacturers will have the tools they need to create exciting fashions and deliver them to consumers faster.

The fashion business has unique demands, and one of the most critical is the need for a collaborative design and development process. This process must be able to function in an environment of complex global sourcing, whether a company is in high fashion, luxury goods, apparel, footwear, home textiles, accessories, or any other style-based products. What makes this unique—and quite complicated—for fashion companies, is the sheer number of varieties that typically exist within product lines, such as styles, colors, and sizes. This complexity compounds further when additional lines and collections enter the mix.

In this  blog post, we’ll explore the first step in reinforcing a collaborative network which is to establish a strong product lifecycle management process that helps manage collections, sustainable fabric compositions, and design specifications. 

Partnership To Provide A Complete Integrated Solution From Design Engineering To PLM And ERP Systems.

Leading Infor partner Independent Computer Consulting Group (“ICCG”) is pleased to announce a new strategic partnership with QBuild Software. Their solutions enable the direct connection of CAD data to ERP, reducing engineering costs, streamlining internal ECN processes, and equipping sales teams with engineering expertise all working inside Infor CloudSuite Industrial (SyteLine) and Infor M3 and Infor LN ERP systems and Infor PLM solutions.

ICCG, a Gold Channel and Global Alliance Partner for Infor, 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.

"CADLink tightly connects engineering departments to their Infor Solution. We are excited to work with ICCG to bring digital transformation and make engineering processes more efficient in the industry. As a fellow Infor Partner, working with ICCG opens up opportunities to take bigger steps towards our mutual goals." Rey Bustamante, Sales Manager QBuild offers CADLink, enabling users the ability to integrate and synchronize their CAD data with Infor ERP and further allows engineers to create Infor Item Master and BOM records identical to engineering CAD data with the click of a button. All their solutions offer flexibility and targeted customization solutions for any specific need.

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:

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.”