Optimize Your Food and Beverage Supply Chain to Control Demand and Cut Waste

Consumers and retailers alike are demanding more from food and beverage supply chains:

• Shoppers want a wide variety of fresh, healthy, sustainable options—all at low prices
• Retailers want private labels and perfectly timed product replenishment, optimizing space on their shelves and in their storerooms
• More frequent promotions are increasing the need for effective price optimization while also shortening product life cycles, increasing the risk of obsolete inventory
• Price wars, volatile raw material costs, and tighter asset utilization are squeezing margins

Old-fashioned planning methods can’t keep pace with the modern food and beverage sector. Food companies must adapt quickly to keep up, without sacrificing service, quality, or profitability:

• Monthly or quarterly planning cycles are too slow to keep up
• Deterministic forecasts don’t factor in demand variability—especially when it comes to intermittent and seasonal items
• ABC segmentation and manual, subjective decision-making result in suboptimal stock placement
• Siloing information in Excel sheets or rigid ERP modules limits flexibility and blocks interconnected insights
• Sales and operations planning (S&OP) relies on outdated data, leading to limited scenario planning capability

The systems many companies rely on create friction and fragility:

• Siloed planning processes hinder visibility and slow decision-making
• Manual tools can’t scale or adapt to new constraints or product introductions
• Lack of intelligence leads to missed opportunities, from promotions to price shifts
• Planners get stuck in emergency mode, always problem-solving and never innovating
• Retailers can’t adapt to shifting food safety regulations

The wrong tools and planning processes put food businesses at risk:

• Inaccurate forecasts reduce service levels and sacrifice product freshness
• Lack of operational transparency blocks agile responses to disruptions and demand shifts
• Inefficient stock placement causes overstocks of slow movers and stockouts of bestsellers
• Inventory spoilage and product obsolescence lead to costly write-offs
• Low resilience leaves you vulnerable to raw material shortages and logistics delays