Remaining Agile: A Guide For Food and Beverage Businesses

As a growing organization, you may find that it’s hard to stay agile and relevant in this evolving industry. As new technology emerges, food and beverage manufacturers must adapt to it and stay up to date with industry dynamics. 

So how does a business like yours stay agile despite supply shortages and other common issues? Read on to find out the answer to this question and how Inecta can help your business remain recession-resistant during economic instability in 2022. 

Benefits of agile processes for food and beverage businesses in 2022 

You’ll find that staying agile as a company will help you by doing more than just improving the bottom line. The top benefits of staying agile include:

• Faster problem-solving. Since no business is perfect, you’re going to run into supply chain issues, distribution delays, transportation problems, and more. As an agile organization, you’ll have a system in place to deal with the problems that food and beverage manufacturers face.
• Efficiency. Minimizing the time that you and your employees spend on internal operations increases your operational efficiency and makes you a customer-focused company.
• Launching new products. A big part of staying agile is continuing to innovate. Agile businesses are willing to adapt by learning new ways of doing business and recognizing when it’s the right time to innovate, positioning them ahead of their competitors.
• Responding to market conditions. Food and beverage manufacturers constantly deal with changing market conditions and competitive landscapes. Agile businesses can make changes and better decisions to account for these new variables.

These benefits may seem obvious, but the steps to get there may not be as simple. If you're looking to enhance your business' agile processes in 2022, try taking these steps: 

Improving the customer experience

You need to get to know your customer on a deeper level and continuously work to improve the customer experience. Companies that want to stay ahead of their competition learn faster and create a business model with experimentation. Trying new things and discovering more about your customers will help you find what is and isn’t working with your current business model.

Collecting data that significantly impacts the customer experience helps to manage change and stay agile. Teams must also embrace data intelligence by turning customer data into a strategic asset that they can use to improve the customer experience on a deeper level.

Hiring the right people

Hiring new employees and onboarding them is an expensive and lengthy process. You likely need to screen dozens of candidates, conduct several rounds of interviews, and then narrow down your choices to one or a few individuals. Then you must train your new hires, which can take weeks or even months. 

A robust hiring system starts from the top down. Having a detailed hiring process and knowing the type of potential employee you're looking for ensures that you bring the most talented people into your company that will represent you and your brand well. You’re looking for a long-term employee that will add value to your organization, so your hiring process should be thorough to avoid the costly mistake of needing to fire employees.

(Continue) Looking at the big picture

As a business leader, you can play a crucial role in helping your team embrace change by asking them to take a break from the day-to-day grind and step back for a moment. You can facilitate this process by organizing brainstorming sessions and whiteboarding days to discuss what’s working well and what could be changed. Getting honest employee feedback on their level of satisfaction with your company will help you retain your top talent.

During these sessions, consider team questions such as:

• What are some potential opportunities in the near future as a company?
• What are the potential threats to our organization with changes in the industry?
• Are there any solutions to these problems that we should invest in as a company?

Encouraging entrepreneurial thinking

The entrepreneurial mindset emphasizes autonomy and discourages micromanagement. As a business owner, you can empower your employees to think like entrepreneurs and solve their problems whenever possible. Giving your employees autonomy allows them to make their own decisions faster, making your company more agile.

Maintaining an agile mindset

Making your company agile requires you to instill an agile mindset in your management team and staff. Keeping your workforce as decentralized, flexible, and autonomous as possible encourages positive change and allows employees to take responsibility for their work and accept honest feedback from management.

Leading by example

Creating an agile organization starts with the executive team leading by example. Consistent and strong leadership can help organizations in any phase of developmetn to stay agile and adaptable to changing market conditions. 

Why Inecta?

Inecta helps food manufacturers stay agile in the evolving food and beverage industry by providing an ERP solution that helps you to centralize your processes and empower your team to act using data-driven insights. 

Visit our website to find out why Inecta is the best ERP solution that food industry veterans trust to grow their company.