Food Industry Solution Templates

As a mature and vital industry, the food industry has been well-studied by consultants, industry analysts, strategists, academics, IT vendors, and the popular press.  The picture that emerges is one of an industry that is slowly evolving:

• from the days when heavily-advertised and regularly promoted national brands were pushed to consumers through a fragmented retail network over which the food and beverage manufacturers held considerable sway;
• to a new and dynamic consumer driven model whereby an increasingly consolidated retail network is wielding its market power and ability to backward integrate (private label) to drive the value chain to a consumer pull model.

Today, the major retail chains compete under multiple banners promising customized assortments, high product availability, a great shopping experience, restaurant quality prepared foods, and competitive prices.  As they do so, they are driving significant changes to store-level operations and upstream business processes in order to maintain or grow profits in the face of rising food and transportation costs. 

Business performance management (BPM) and business intelligence (BI) technologies and methods are key weapons in the process improvement arsenal.  Based on our extensive food industry experience, our broad functional experience, our Six Sigma-based process improvement methods, and our high caliber BI and BPM skills, DecisionPath has developed nine Food Industry Solution Templates that enable companies to solve common industry challenges and jump-start process improvement initiatives.  They can be specifically tailored for your company to provide a solid foundation for business intelligence solutions.

Inventory Management

• Rapidly deploy and leverage information and analytical tools to reduce inventory levels
• Gain visibility into inventory at all stages across your value network
• Reduce out-of-stocks and inventory at risk of becoming aged by accessing timely and detailed inventory information
• Monitor inventory turns and compare to budget and plan

Revenue Management

• Rapidly deploy and leverage sales information and analytical tools to plan, track, and manage sales against budgets and revised targets throughout the fiscal year
• Leverage trend and current information to target new sales activities
• Identify customers and products with high or low unit/contribution margins
• Manage promotional sales by leveraging retail POS data

Customer Service Analysis

• Find the optimal balance between service levels, inventory levels, and profitability
• Addresses industry challenges such as improving fill rates and measuring on-time deliveries
• Exploit supply chain information to better adapt to increasing service demands and other changes in the industry

Business Performance Management

• Actively manage and improve the core business processes that drive strategic and operational results
• Leverage metrics and KPIs to focus management attention on performance improvement opportunities
• Use information as a competitive advantage; provide business analysts in your organization with analytical capabilities to drill down into root causes of performance variances

Sales & Operations Planning

• Leverage integrated historical and current demand data and associated item master data to drive internally and externally consistent demand plans, production plans, procurement plans, inventory plans and financial plans
• Act swiftly on variances between goals, plans and actual values by consolidating data into one repository
• Streamline your S & OP process with better access to detailed information

Cost & Financial Analysis

• Leverage integrated historical and current cost data to actively manage, reduce, and/or optimize product, process, activity, business unit, and/or functional costs, margins, and profits
• Leverage sophisticated cost analysis techniques to improve planning, budgeting, and control processes
• Addresses industry challenges such as intense price competition, coping with rising input prices, moving to a demand pull value chain and improving supply chain productivity

Category Management & Assortment Optimization

• Enhance ability to customize and optimize assortment mix by retail format, region, consumer segment, and product/category
• Leverage retail POS data to develop the right product category plan
• Optimize the value of your product portfolio by focusing on core brands that drive growth and profitability
• Exploit information to bolster your competitive differentiation vis-a-vis retailer's use of premium private labels

Supply Chain & Operations Analysis

• Increase your supply chain productivity by measuring key performance indicators across such dimensions as supplier performance, adherence to production schedule, warehouse space utilization, and transportation costs
• Gain a competitive advantage by giving supply planners access to detailed information on inventory, production and distribution

Trade Promotion & Optimization

• Improve ability to understand the relationship between trade spending, pricing, sales, and profitability in order to effectively allocate limited trade promotion funds to strengthen brands and brand positioning
• Leverage retail POS data to monitor sales lift of product promotions
• Gain insight into pocket price, i.e. product price after trade allowances
• Accurately measure deductions and trade claims to determine trade promotion effectiveness

For more information or to schedule a demonstration of our Customer Service Analysis, Revenue Management, or Inventory Management solution templates, please send us a note at FoodIndustrySolutions@DecisionPath.com.