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.

This complete product lifecycle solution helps reduce the time from inspiration to the launch of new styles and SKUs for the fashion industry vertically.

Philadelphia, PA – February 26, 2024 -- Independent Computer Consulting Group, Inc. (“ICCG”) is pleased to announce the addition of Infor‘s best-of-breed solution - Fashion Product Lifecycle Management (PLM), to its solution portfolio for its Fashion, Home Décor, Footwear, and Luxury products customers. This, along with Cloud suite Fashion (Infor M3) and Infor Supply Chain Management suite, completes the solution suite for the Fashion Industry vertical. We extend Fashion to Home Décor, Furnishing, Footwear, and Luxury products.

Infor PLM for Fashion was created using the latest Infor technologies to help fashion brands, manufacturers, and private brand retailers develop styles more quickly and efficiently and improve speed to market. This is one of the key competitive differentiators for Fashion designers, manufacturers, and distributors.

ICCG Inc. is an Infor enterprise software-focused consulting firm with a global presence and a track record of over 2000 business transformation projects, with execution across not only Infor M3 ERP systems but also Supply Chain Planning Systems, Warehouse Management solutions, and now PLM solutions deployments.

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.

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.

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.”

As robust and far-reaching as ERP solutions can be, it's simply not feasible to think that they can be all-encompassing, providing complete business functionality for every aspect of an organization. The simple truth is that all ERP solutions have gaps in specialized areas such as product lifecycle management (PLM). Successful companies know that it's best to close these gaps with focused, industry-specific solutions that address the unique aspects of their business.

Of course, the renewed and now emphatically changing world of Farm-to-Table is upon us and growing in popularity at rapid speed. I do find it all so very interesting because many years ago I did work with Gardenburger (in Portland, OR) prior to Kellogg’s purchasing them. 

Morningstar Farms were popular items (and still are today) but also were products that were sold primarily to vegans or vegetarians and often sold at local organic food co-ops or whole food markets (or similar). Might be a stretch analogy but let’s recall that decades ago major automobile companies were making electric cars but in similar terms the renewed and recent popularity can be directed at Tesla. Beyond meat and Impossible foods (and many others to come) will also need to be certain they can support the new demand so that they are not like Popeye’s chicken franchises that gained major popularity with their chicken sandwiches but had a complete failure with keeping up with the demand (failed supply chain).

As to the article, I think that the following words really show how McDonald's and others are afraid of falling behind, but also somewhat skeptical about whether this growth vertical will continue. Let alone, let’s be frank, McDonald's has never been the first to initiate or ingratiate itself to healthy menu items (and lifestyle-consumer) choices.

The experiment shows that the company has paid attention to consumers’ growing interest in plant-based burgers.

However, the P.L.T. is not vegan.

The stakes are smaller. If McDonald’s P.L.T. is a flop, it can quickly pull it from the market and go back to the drawing board.

M3 Food & Beverage is a comprehensive ERP solution designed to help food and beverage companies respond to changes in customer demands, manage their global supply chains, plan for seasonality, and reduce waste. 

Infor M3 Food & Beverage is the industry's most complete solution dedicated to solving the unique challenges of the food industry, including shelf-life, yield; reverse bill of materials, attribute management, grower accounting, and comprehensive asset management.