Food and beverage industry technology readiness and line of focus for 2022

My annual top 5 takeaways for food and beverage technologists

Every year I do a personal recap of the challenges and opportunities I identify in technology. This helps me build a mental readiness map for the next year. I decided to share it for the first time. Comments and viewpoints are welcome.

(1) Demystify and unpack digital transformation. Digital transformation initiatives can have a significant pay-off if they focus on the functional and cross-functional pockets that are ripe for transformation.

• Organizations should identify the processes, data, and technologies that can generate significant value. Select 1 opportunity (not 2, not 3, …) for each of these pockets, and form a team to adopt, or to build and deploy a solution in each of these areas.
• 60% of the value will come from these pockets. The next 20% of the value will come from a second iteration.

(2) Use data and analytics tools to monitor internal performance, understand your customers, and improve your market awareness. It is specially important for startups or companies that want to grow, to provide visibility of these 4 groups of metrics.

• Identify critical business performance indicators. Invest in reliable data sources and develop or adopt metrics to track these indicators. These variables are in your control and will guide the majority of your decisions.
• Go beyond financial performance. Your board will support - and should require you to identify - indicators that will put your company on the map for DEI, innovation, thought leadership, environmental practices, and sustainability. If they don't, get a new board soon!
• Understand your customers and consumers. You cannot control how your customer and consumers react, neither how the global supply chain will adjust to these reactions, however you can de-risk the effects and anticipate. Invest in data sources to build customer and consumer profiles, identify the attributes of your product or service that best represent these profiles, conduct quarterly gap analyses, and keep a dynamic product innovation roadmap to adjust, simplify or expand your portfolio.
• Understand your position, strengths, risks and vulnerabilities in the market. Conduct regular SWOT analyses including representatives of all functional areas, your board, your strategic suppliers and customers. Invest in market share analysis tools and build a radar to detect threats and find opportunities. Do this at least once/year.

(3) Invest in programs and tools to cyber-educate yourself and your people, constantly. Food processing, food supply, distribution and security are critical assets for any country. Assume bad actors are always watching for an opportunity and don't underestimate the value of your data.

• Cyber education, awareness and response training are the first lines of defense to protect your data and systems.
• Social engineering - the techniques designed to manipulate people and extract valuable information to gain access to data, systems and assets- account for over 90% of cyber intrusions. Some of these are phishing, spear phishing, baiting, scareware, etc.
• Invest in services, programs and tools to educate and test the readiness of your entire staff in identifying, preventing, reporting and reacting to social engineering attempts.
• This is specially important for individuals with access to critical data, system administration tools, and high clearance privileges.
• Finally, protect, but don’t let the paranoia paralyze and stall your innovation projects: there's a thin line between readiness and stagnation!

(4) Build strategic partnerships. No one succeeds in isolation in a global market. A strategic partnership can be the key to unlock expansion and achieve growth.

• Enroll in specialized digital connector platforms to build and maintain a reliable network of partners through meaningful and productive interactions.
• Invest in smart tools to maintain a rich pipeline of partnerships, opportunities and resources.
• CRM solution vendors are coming up with sentiment analysis and other AI-based modules that identify market opportunities, generate and improve lead scoring, and generate account specific recommendations. Companies can extend these capabilities beyond sales force and procurement, and use them to strategically manage partnership opportunities.

(5) Always aim for integration. There's no Swiss army knife in tech. Companies are constantly challenged to acquire and adopt new tools to reduce cost and gain competitive advantages in manufacturing, distribution, demand and supply planning, increase success of product launch and innovation initiatives, capture new customer segments, and expand market share. The benefits of these tools will often be offset by the hidden costs of additional manual processes and headcount required to integrate data and systems. Invest in tools to maintain an updated architecture and inventory of your technology portfolio, and invest in engineering capabilities to integrate your portfolio at the authentication, data, functional and UX levels.