Doing more with less is the name of the game for most food and beverage companies in today’s competitive business environment. Whether they’re seeking ways to reduce operating expenses, eliminate manual processes, streamline their operations or gain access to reliable data, the companies need robust technology systems that help them meet these and other goals.
“The food and beverage industry is evolving rapidly,” SelectHub points out. “A whole new set of consumer demands has recently emerged due to changes in interests and technological advances.”
“Trends like health and wellness, shifting lifestyles, changing preferences, food safety, sustainability and technology have all received a heightened amount of visibility,” it continues. “In addition to these trends, [there are] mounting concerns of ever-changing and new regulatory acts as well as food safety.” These and other challenges can be managed using enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems, the publication adds.
Beating the Competition
In The 6 systems that you must put in your business before you win the competition, Entrepreneur discusses how modern ERP applications can help food and beverage companies stay ahead of the pack. “Mature, competing companies generally already have ERP software,” Entrepreneur states, “but they usually struggle with older versions with patches.”
“If the competition, whether large or small, has a cutting-edge ERP solution with already concentrated functionalities necessary for formulas, seasonal planning, and predictive visibility of the necessary ingredients, among other characteristics,” Entrepreneur continues, “you run the risk of losing the market [share].”
A top choice for food and beverage companies, Netsuite Cloud ERP effectively replaces disparate systems and Excel spreadsheets with a system that can handle inventory and order management, ecommerce, financials and customer relationship management, among other functions. Used by many companies in the food and beverage industry, NetSuite offers a complete solution that benefits entire organizations, and not just certain aspects of their operations.
For example, food and beverage companies use their ERP to manage their global supply chains.
Using NetSuite’s streamlined sales cycles, these companies get a 360-degree view of the buyer across all channels and touchpoints. This helps them more readily find and acquire new customers; deliver consistent interactions; and delight customers with customer service that keeps them happy and coming back for more.
Tapping into Extensive Capabilities
With NetSuite, food and beverage companies can also manage all of their product data and recipes in a single repository, and change control processes or designs without the need for extensive IT intervention. This helps reduce time to market for new and updated products.
By moving data and workflows to a unified cloud ERP, food and beverage companies can also better collect, organize and retrieve their data. Using dashboards, companies can get a full view of their end-to-end operations at a glance, generate reports for sharing, pinpoint specific lot numbers and mitigate potential issues before they become larger problems.
The benefits of cloud ERP for food and beverage don’t end there. Companies can also automatically balance demand and supply; optimize their inventory and manufacturing resources; and better manage vendors and purchasing process visibility to ensure that they’re creating the best price-delivery combinations.
Other benefits that companies see when they replace their manual and disparate systems with NetSuite include improved procurement and materials control; full lot traceability and recall management; real-time shop floor management; and improved quality management processes.
Accelerating Processes, Creating Efficiencies
Used by thousands of organizations to manage their accounting needs, NetSuite’s financial management solution accelerates the financial close process, provides strong expense management, offers streamlined and auditable revenue management and ensures complete real-time visibility into a food and beverage company’s financial performance.
NetSuite financial management seamlessly integrates with all NetSuite order management, inventory, CRM and ecommerce functions to streamline critical business processes, enabling all employees to work from a single source of finance, sales and customer data.
Built in the cloud and accessible from anywhere on any device, NetSuite continues to play a vital role in the food and beverage sector, where supply chains are often extensive and complex. As these supply chains grow—and as the companies behind them continue to expand—NetSuite is ready to scale up and evolve right along with the organizations that it supports.
