The food and beverage industry key metrics

From the apple orchard to the check-out, business intelligence (BI) uncovers opportunities and risks hidden in your product lifecycle and company performance. Food and Beverage wholesale managers are using data analytics and instant reporting daily to make smart business decisions about their stock, their sales and their customers.

In this data-driven economy you have to measure it, to manage it. Gut-based business decisions can’t compete as the food and beverage market becomes more complex in terms of commercial, e-commerce, regulatory and customer demands. KPMG says it’s time for the industry to be resilient. While most consumers surveyed expect to resume their pre-pandemic dining habits by early 2021, several operators in America appear to be bracing for hard times, with most expecting reduced sales through mid-2021.

KPMG's Covid 19: Food and Beverage Sector Dynamics report indicates recovery may prove tricky.

While stockpiling and consuming nearly all food at home is likely to subside as states and cities reopen, other COVID-19 trends in the Food & Beverage sector are expected to endure. These include the shift to e-commerce, food safety concerns, and the desire for supply chain traceability.

However, operator performance through recent downturns indicate that those who can hone their strategy, test their methods, and remain afloat throughout the potentially lean periods will enter the recovery poised for expansion. Data will play a key role in the recovery.

“The emerging data-driven economy has two primary characteristics: the abundance and complexity of data and the speed of change and thus, decision-making… The ability of leaders to turn data into actionable information that allows them to make timely, more accurate decisions is creating entirely new markets… Those who embrace effective data analytics as a business imperative can gain a competitive advantage in the rapidly evolving global digital economy.”

BI insights worth having

Customers have never been more educated, demanding and embracing of food culture.

Asking questions of your sales, inventory and logistics data lets you explore customer behaviour to improve product performance, predict the next wave in demand and find cost savings in operations.

And you don’t have to wait days for these answers, just minutes. It takes an hour’s training to go from beginner to intermediate user and answer these questions:Did sales drop for that product because of new packaging, or pricing?

• How do our DIFOTs (delivery in full on time) affect sales?

• How did reducing bottle-size impact different territories and peak sales periods?

• Which customers feed our bottom line?

• How many customers have we lost, and why?

• Which debtors need reining in?

• Why is one territory’s processed meat sales outperforming another of similar size and demographic?

• Where’s our high margin sweet spot and how can we add value?

• Which sales reps and distribution centres are underperforming?

Why BI works

Product tracking and performance management, inventory management and finding cost efficiencies are top of the agenda. And that’s where BI solutions add most value to measure important business KPIs.

Today’s BI leaders like Phocas have nailed back-end complexity by integrating data from all your sources (ERP, CRM and spreadsheets etc). And it’s designed in a way that lets you follow your train of thought to ask questions of company-wide data. You get answers straight away on the desktop, or your mobile device.

Decisions on-the-move

That means delivery truck drivers, sales reps and warehouse managers can all use BI to review operations and share information to make and save money.

It’s security safe

Today’s BI tools also have easy set up and adjustment of security levels, so that only people who need access to certain data, get it.