For the food and beverage industry, no time of year is as profitable as the summer months but they can also be your company’s biggest challenge. As cold beverages and seasonal foods fly off the shelves, the number of orders, shipments, and delivery expectations, can double or triple. Meanwhile, retailers are clamoring for products to be on shelves in a timely fashion, all while you’re under pressure to keep costs low and maintain profit margins. How will your brand, manufacturer, or distributor meet these challenges and manage the surge in demand? You need to do it faster, better, and more cost-effectively than ever before.
Why summer demand puts pressure on food and beverage supply chains
The Summer months bring a surge in demand for food and drinks as most grocery products experience a sharp increase in sales, putting great pressure on retailers and suppliers alike to meet the higher volumes.
Unlike other industries, seasonal peaks do not affect all product categories in the same way. Products may have a limited shelf life and fluctuate in demand due to seasonal variations or last minute purchases. Whatever the volume, retailers still expect accurate purchase order processing, on-time shipments, compliant ASNs, and clean invoicing. TrueCommerce provides a seasonal peak enabled solution specifically designed for the food and beverage industry. TrueCommerce’s supply chain automation, EDI and retailer connectivity solutions deliver end-to-end traceability in Retail, Wholesale and Food Service channels.
Forecasting demand isn’t the only challenge. Companies still have to keep operations synchronized while volume increases. With that volume increase comes more orders, shipments, and complexity with coordination.
As volume increases, scaling operations isn’t just about handling more orders, it’s about how seamlessly your systems work together. For many food and beverage companies, that means ensuring EDI is tightly integrated with ERP systems so purchase orders, shipments, and invoices flow automatically between trading partners and internal operations. Without that integration, teams are often forced back into manual processes that slow down fulfillment and introduce risk during peak demand periods.
The biggest challenges food & beverage companies face during peak season
- Manual work. When teams are still entering orders by hand, validating data across multiple systems, or managing retailer documents through disconnected workflows, the rising volume quickly becomes a problem. Carrington Farms used integrated EDI to reduce turnaround time on sales orders, invoices, and warehouse documents from hours to minutes, while Buddha Brands used EDI automation to eliminate non-value-added order entry and invoicing work.
- Inventory pressure is another issue. The balance between availability and excess inventory is one of the biggest challenges in the category. Companies need better visibility into what has been ordered, what has shipped, and what inventory is actually available across their channels and partners.
- Retailer compliance. These retailers rely on accurate and timely electronic documents. Late or inaccurate ASNs and invoices can cause chargebacks and delays just when companies need to be running at their best.
Maintaining traceability gets harder when volume increases
The likelihood of misrouted, mislabeled or missing shipments increases as demand spikes during the busiest time of the year. Maintaining accurate tracking and tracing of shipments requires proper generation of ASNs, coordinated activity in warehouses or 3PLs, and accurate lot level data to be communicated throughout the supply chain. TrueCommerce EDI helps with FSMA compliance and automated data exchange to smooth over these road bumps.
Even outside of a large compliance project, as the volume of orders to be fulfilled against a same day delivery promise grows, it is no longer sufficient to rely on manual spreadsheeting or hand coding between systems in order to track packages. The data required for traceability must be enabled to travel with the package – not stranded between systems waiting for processing. For food and beverage manufacturers this means being able to demonstrate evidence of compliance to their retailers and distributors.
Where manual processes break first
Processes can go wrong at the very points where speed and coordination are most important. This is certainly true for manual order processing, for the manual creation of shipment documents, manual quality checks, and manual communications with warehouses and 3PL providers.
Summer demand doesn’t add new challenges to your system, it simply scales up whatever difficulties and pains your system is already experiencing. If your system is hard to scale in April, it will be harder to scale in July. If your system is manual in April, it will be more manual in July.
How EDI helps food and beverage companies scale retailer demand
As demand for food and beverages surge during peak seasons, businesses are looking for ways to meet increased demand more efficiently. By automating the exchange of documents that trading partners, retailers, distributors and suppliers are already asking for, such as purchase orders, ASNs, invoices, forecasts and other warehouse related messages, TrueCommerce can simplify and streamline your supply chain workflows. Learn how TrueCommerce can automate your food and beverage supply chain workflows.
Automation in EDI processing is more valuable than ever during peak season. Batch automation and reduced manual rekeying will especially deliver value. Automation will allow you company to efficiently process the higher volume of retailer transactions. Processing efficiently during busy times of the year allows your company to focus on exceptions rather than processing day-to-day transactions.
Why ERP-connected automation matters during summer demand
Even at the end of summer retailers are clamoring for seasonal product ranging from swimwear and BBQ items to summer drinks. An integrated ERP system reduces the margin for error by passing orders into business systems in real time and keeping information such as data for shipments and invoice posting up to date. For Buddha Brands, working with retailers such as independent stores and gift shops via TrueCommerce allows them to receive orders in real-time enabling fast and correct shipping and with accurate up to date data.
Automation is most valuable when tied to your business’s core functions. TrueCommerce brings value with automation by connecting EDI and supply chain automation to your existing ERP or other business applications to automate your order processing, fulfillment, and invoicing.
A practical checklist for preparing before summer demand hits
We’re only a few months into the year, but many food and drink companies will be already thinking about how to manage their businesses during the busy summer period.
Here are a few tips on how to prepare for increased demand:
- Identify all retailer and distributor requirements going into peak season. It’s painful to learn after the fact that there are certain things that need to be done to ASN, labeling or invoicing that your current process is not configured to handle.
- Test the order-to-shipment process. Validate the transfer of purchase orders, warehouse communications and invoices as required within systems and with trading partners.
- Ensure access to required traceability and shipment data. If you typically populate lot, expiration, shipment or partner information yourself and manually load this into your system, now would be a good time to correct process to handle the increase in volumes required during peak.
- Make sure you have connected workflows between an organization’s ERP system, their warehouse or distribution center, and 3PL providers. Connected workflows are crucial during the summer peak season rush and all other times of increased demand.
- Preparing for the next surge in volumes. What would happen to your business if volumes were to increase next month? Where would the biggest bottleneck be in your business? Would it be in order entry, ASN, warehouse coordination or accounting and billing? Identifying the area of highest value is key to finding the highest opportunity for improvement. These are the themes that TrueCommerce focuses on in helping food and beverage companies implement supply chain modernization initiatives around EDI, traceability and more connected business processes.
How TrueCommerce helps food and beverage companies scale without adding manual work
TrueCommerce helps large and rapidly growing food and beverage companies to optimize their supply and retail operations by eliminating manual work associated with omnichannel retailing, automating business processes and enabling innovation.
TrueCommerce connects food and beverage companies with their partners, customers, suppliers, and distributors to create a true connected supply chain. Stay ahead of seasonal demand and keep your supply chain running smoothly. Explore how TrueCommerce supports food and beverage companies with the tools they need to scale with confidence.