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How to Streamline Processes and Reduce Costs With a Food and Beverage PLM

Cloud computing has changed everything from the way people interact online to how businesses manage their day-to-day operations. If you’re a food and beverage manufacturer, and you’re not using cloud technology, you’re missing out on a key ingredient to success.

Cloud computing lays the foundation for product lifecycle management (PLM), a new type of software that helps manufacturers manage and maintain data from every part of a product’s journey — all the way from ideation to market.

Given the stringent regulations around labeling, and increasingly complex supply chains and recipes, you need PLM designed for the specific needs of the food and beverage industry. But how much can a PLM solution really help, and what should you look for in a solution?

The Benefits of Cloud-Based PLM

PLM platforms serve as a central database for everything you need to record and track about your products, including market research, product ideas, recipes, test data, customer feedback, and sales performance. Best of all, it’s all stored centrally on one system that’s accessible from anywhere.

Unlike previous generations of the software, PLM on the cloud enables flexibility. Cloud-based PLM also integrates seamlessly with existing systems to provide more cohesion between different departments and stakeholders.

PLM can streamline reporting on inventory, ingredients, recipes, and product simulations. These reports help food and beverage companies make more informed business decisions with less time and effort. All of this translates to a number of competitive advantages, like:

  • Clean, traceable documentation
  • Less data redundancy
  • Streamlined innovation cycles, with transparency all the way from product ideation, to production, to customers’ pantries
  • Accelerated time to market for new products

PLM has proved to be the single most essential tool to increase revenue and ROI for food and beverage manufacturers.

The Benefits of a PLM Designed for Food and Beverage

A standard PLM isn’t capable of providing the same functionality and convenience as a PLM that’s purpose-built for the needs of food and beverage manufacturers. These databases are already set up to catalog different types of ingredients, formulas, and supply chain data, without the need for a lot of customization. Many developers update their platforms to meet the latest regulatory requirements for food and beverage labeling, so users have less compliance risks simply by managing data on their platforms.

More advanced food and beverage PLM platforms can even run simulations to test different ingredients and recipes without going through the trouble, time, and expense of physically making a kitchen. That way, by the time a particular recipe gets to the prototyping phase, it’s already almost perfect and just needs final adjustments for taste, texture, and other desirable attributes.

The Ultimate Tool for Project Efficiency

Whether you’re looking for a first-time PLM solution, or you’re already using a general PLM, it’s time to upgrade to a purpose-built platform designed for the needs of your industry. SpecPage by Revalize is a leading PLM solution that’s helped thousands of food and beverage manufacturers navigate the challenges of the global marketplace, and generate substantial increases in revenue. The solution:

  • Captures data from enterprise resource planning (ERP) software and connects data from end to end
  • Automates compliance checks
  • Calculates nutrients, allergens, contaminants, and costs in real time
  • Delivers clean labels according to the requirements of the distribution country, and in the appropriate languages
  • Seamlessly integrates with GS1’s Global Data Synchronization Network and other standards verification organizations
  • Connects with the SpecPage’s Suppliers Guide to provide rapid access to essential specifications to reduce workload and increase data security

As more cloud-based PLM solutions enter the market, it’s important to know that not all will meet your needs. For food and beverage manufacturers, you need a vendor that’s immersed in the challenges of your industry. 

See the difference for yourself with a free product demo.

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