Three key challenges that we can solve for manufacturers in the Food industry

The Food industry is one of the most competitive industries out there, so it can be easy to get caught up in the whirlwind of trying to keep everything on the right track.

Sometimes, it’s best served that you allow yourself to take a step out of the whirlwind and reflect. Why is it such a pain to trace our product? Why on earth are we using countless Excel spreadsheets to do our finances? Why is our quality control out of control?

If you find yourself questioning why your company is plodding along with a dated old business system, it’s time that you made a change for the better. Let’s examine just 3 of the key challenges that are only exacerbated by having a tired old business system and that can be swiftly eradicated with Dynamics Food.

1) Still using paper to communicate with your retailers and 3PL’s

Paper? Come on, let’s be real, nobody should be using paper to track food stock movements by batch/use-by/sell-by dates or to communicate with a retailer or 3PL. I can guarantee that none of the big hitters in your industry are getting stressed out by the calligraphy skills of their colleagues.

Dynamics Food can provide you with fully integrated EDI that automatically receives orders from retailers and passes information directly between both your systems and that of the 3PL – so that your stock movements can be executed.

You’ll never get confused by a delivery that lands in Good Received at your 3PL or major retailer again. If you’ve shipped 1000 items and invoiced for all of them, yet the GRN says they’ve only received 990 you would normally have to reflect multiple changes across your system to reflect this change. With Dynamics Food, it takes just one click.

2) You’re struggling to control your own quality control

Is it a struggle to quickly record your product test results and make them easily available to everybody who needs them? Quality control is a critical aspect of working in the Food industry, so a chaotic process will only create a potential nightmare.

With Dynamics Food, you can perform quality inspections at any point in time, whether that be hourly, start of day or even ad-hoc. This applies to all outbound logistics activities such as picking inventory or warehouse shipment. For each outgoing inspection, Dynamics Food will require you to enter a quality control for these transactions. As a result, goods will only be shipped if they’ve been given the green light.

To even start a product inspection, you will have a range of instruments that will help you to perform the process. Within Dynamics Food, in calibration registration you can specify how much your equipment needs testing, how the test will be conducted, who is going to perform the calibration and what is the absolute limit in which the equipment can be approved.

3) It’s difficult to give a straight answer on stock availability

‘Can I place an order for this please?’ – Such a simple question and one that should fill you with excitement and joy that a customer is craving your product. If you dread a customer asking you this question, because you’re going to have to run around the office in a panic to give them a straight answer then it’s safe to say that you’ve got a stock availability problem.

Dynamics Food will provide you with real-time stock availability and movements with best before/use-by Dates and catchweight all considered, along with minimum shelf-life per customer. You won’t need to test your customers patience any longer and your staff won’t be stressed out by a simple stock query.

If your business system is proving to be a challenge in all the above situations, then maybe it’s time that you come and met us! We’d like to invite you to join us for FREE at Microsoft’s executive office in Reading on Tuesday 1st October, where we will be examining exactly how you can ‘Reduce risk and boost your business performance with Dynamics Food.’