Food businesses are always mindful of their production processes, regulatory obligations and market position. But with customers becoming more interested in their food’s provenance, regulators becoming more concerned with compliance and the market constantly evolving, it’s more important than ever to have good insights into your operation.
That’s where data and data handling can make a big difference. If you capture data across your supply chain, production processes, and distribution systems, you can improve performance across the board.
Enterprise management systems can help just about any business, regardless of size, type or industry. At Eagle360, we use and recommend Microsoft Dynamics 365 as we believe it offers the best combination of features, support, ongoing development, technology partners and price.
Aptean’s Foodware 365 is a great example. It’s an ERP solution custom-created for the food industry. Built on Dynamics 365, it offers state-of-the-art data, analytics and operational capabilities. These capabilities include artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning (ML) and the Internet of Things (IoT).
Do more with data
Foodware understands that while no two food businesses are alike, they all face some common challenges. Whether your company handles bread and bakery products, dairy, fish, fresh produce, meat or sweets and confectionery, Foodware can help with:
- Business intelligence
- Quality and food safety
- Administration, purchasing and sales
- Supply chain management
- Production and operations
- Consignment management
- Data exchange/EDI
Business intelligence
Foodware can help you visualise your data with Power BI’s easy-to-use dashboards. It allows you to improve your data quality, forecast demand and better manage your shop floor. It can also track your business’s mass balance and give insights into your overall equipment effectiveness (OEE).
Quality and food safety
Managing, maintaining and improving your operations’ food quality and safety is critical to your success. Foodware can manage requirements for systems and certifications such as General Food Law, HACCP, IFS and ISO9001/2200. It can also handle product specifications, tracking and tracing, inspection status, quality control and non-conformances.
Administration, purchasing and sales
Foodware gives you fine-grained control over your business back end. It offers a range of modules to meet specific needs, including purchase and sales, contract registration and processing, demand forecasting, rebates, catch weight, EDI and financial administration.
Supply chain management
Few things are as crucial to a food business as supply chain management. That’s why Foodware has capabilities to give you the insight, visibility and confidence you need. These capabilities include inventory management and tracing, packaging and (SSCC) labelling, scanning, transport management, scale connections and EDI. It can also handle different languages and currencies and all your EDI requirements.
Production and operations
Process efficiency can save your business time and money. Foodware’s production modules can help optimise your operations, so you’re getting more value from your investments in staff, systems and training. They include advanced production planning and forecasting, operations control, co-product and by-product recording, shop floor control, mass balance sheet management, cost price calculations and insight into OEE.
Consignment management
Foodware’s real-time consignment management capabilities can give you confidence in your stock and inventory status. It can handle import agreements and documentation, pre-calculate costs and provide insights into produce ripeness. It can manage certificates and quality inspections, identify conflicts arising from quality inspections and expired certifications, allocate inventory and provide detailed consignment results.
An all-around solution
Foodware’s Dynamics 365 foundations offer advanced data exchange/EDI capabilities for all food businesses.
It also includes productivity tools and capabilities such as e-commerce, invoice processing, output and document management, document scanning and more.
It complements our extensive capabilities with Microsoft Dynamics 365 and is a complete solution for your food business.
If you think it sounds like it might be a good fit for your business, contact us today and we’ll help you learn more.al