EP 14
Unified Visibility’s Impact on Food & Bev Industry
Available On
Guests:
-
Gráinne Lynch
EU Serialization Lead - Manufacturing & Supply Chain
Company:
Accenture
In this episode we speak with Gráinne Lynch, the EU Serialization Lead – Manufacturing & Supply Chain Systems at Enterprise System Partners (An Accenture Company). We discuss the serialization and traceability landscape in the food and beverages industry, “farm to fork” concepts and examples of shipment and serialization traceability convergence.
Behind the Mic: This Month’s Supply Chain Tech Recap
In Episode 14 of the Supply Chain Tech Podcast, we welcome back Gráinne Lynch, EU Serialization Lead for Manufacturing and Supply Chain at Accenture. After her earlier discussion on pharmaceutical traceability, this episode focuses on the food and beverage industry. Gráinne explores how serialization, traceability, and track and trace concepts are applied to enable complete visibility from farm to table.
As consumer expectations grow around quality, sustainability, and ethical sourcing, Gráinne shares how food companies are evolving their strategies. Through better supplier collaboration, digital storytelling, and a more unified approach to visibility, these companies are finding new ways to build trust and improve operational resilience.
Key Takeaways
Serialization Brings Confidence at the Product Level
Serialization, the process of giving each product a unique identifier, is no longer just for the pharmaceutical sector. Food and beverage companies are now applying serialization to ensure authenticity and quality throughout their supply chains. This is particularly important for products like dairy and chocolate that can vary in quality and are sensitive to temperature.
Track, Trace, and Transparency Strengthen Consumer Trust
Gráinne outlines a powerful framework that includes trackability, traceability, and transparency. These three elements work together to offer assurance about where products came from and how they were handled. When combined effectively, they help build long lasting consumer confidence and loyalty.
Blockchain and Data Platforms Support Certification
As more brands market themselves as organic or ethical, the need for proof is growing. Gráinne highlights how technologies like blockchain and services such as TealBook and EcoVadis can help verify supplier claims. These platforms make it easier to check for issues like deforestation or child labor and provide greater assurance to both companies and consumers.
Siloed Systems Hold Back Full Supply Chain Visibility
Although enterprise systems collect valuable data, they often do so in disconnected modules. Gráinne points out that sourcing, production, logistics, and quality control teams all operate in their own ways with different tools. Without a unified view or shared goals, companies struggle to achieve full traceability.
True Trust Requires Culture Change as Well as Technology
Technology alone cannot solve visibility challenges. Gráinne emphasizes that companies must create a culture of collaboration both internally and with suppliers. Aligning shared goals and consistent metrics is key to making supply chains more transparent, efficient, and trusted by customers.
Premsai Sainathan 00:02
welcome to the supply chain Tech podcast with Decklar in this episode we speak with gronia Lynch the EU serialization lead for manufacturing and supply chain systems at enterprise system Partners an Accenture company gr Works us through the serialization and traceability Landscape in the food and beverages industry Farm to FK Concepts and examp examples of shipment and serialization traceability convergence in food and beverages BR welcome back to our podcast uh it’s really nice having you here
Gráinne Lynch 00:43
again um the last time we spoke about uh serialization and traceability in the Pharma industry and uh this is a phenomenal topic because in context of the whole covid-19 vaccine shipments that are going to be um distributed around the world World um people are looking at how they can ensure that every vaccine that is used for inoculation uh is traced right from the source to the point at which it’s administered and it’s also maintained the right condition as it changes all these hands um and now when the whole
Premsai Sainathan 01:21
world is talking about it um grania if you remember our conversation we were actually talking about how the same concept is is also being adapted by the or adopted by the uh food and beverage industry because food obviously just like medicines is also uh extremely critical to the consumer when it comes to the health aspect right uh so I’d really like to understand from you gr um how is serialization uh impacting the food and beverage industry especially in context of the pandemic but just before that
Gráinne Lynch 01:59
actually uh maybe for our audience here uh who are understanding serialization and the words traceability today uh could you help Define these two words for a sconia yep sure Prem thanks so much to it’s great to be back here talking to you thanks for the invitation um I love talking about these topics so um you can stop I keep going too much so serialization is the unique marking of a product that will be in the hands of a consumer or a patient it means that each pack has a unique code on it and it can be
Premsai Sainathan 02:43
authenticated against a source of information so a source of Truth in some way um that’s the object of of that’s the point of putting a unique code on every box that it shouldn’t be repeated and therefore it can be authenticated um it’s it’s not a particularly new phenomenon it’s it’s very widespread now in the Life Science and pharmaceutical industry typically for P for prescription products um that you might get in a pharmacy but in certain places um it’s also for overthe
Gráinne Lynch 03:15
counter um medicines um the traceability concept traceability is a very broad concept and it means that you know um a couple of different things so it it’s very difficult to talk about traceability just on its own so let me talk about four Concepts four Concepts so the it’s it because track and Trace are linked to traceability so let me talk to you about tracking tracking is what you might do in Rome B when you have visibility of your product within the supply chain you track it Forward traceability is a
Premsai Sainathan 03:52
little bit different traceability is a historic look back so you trace back seeing where something has come from um identifying it Source identifying the processes it went through to get to where it is today and that could be at any point so let’s talk about food in this SI situation in order to talk about traceability um here so let’s let’s let’s talk about dairy products I suppose the difference between life science in Pharmaceuticals and food is that not everybody is a patient we are
Gráinne Lynch 04:23
at some stage in our lives but not everybody might be at any one point but guaranteed Everybody Eats something on a daily basis so it’s something that’s very personal to every single person so let’s think about a food substance um you know and let’s let’s talk about um something that I you know I I I enjoy eating uh with your dairy products so let’s just talk about that and not everybody eats Dairy but still let’s just talk about that traceability is the ability to see where that product may
Premsai Sainathan 04:53
have originated from to see where that product uh where its ingredients was produced where it was processed what products were added during the during the production of that product where it where it was where those processes happened how it got to how it was moved throughout its chain transport chain and how did it get to me as a consumer and traceability it could be all of that or it could be little sections of that but from a consumer point of view it’s the ability to look back about where the
Gráinne Lynch 05:28
product has come from so that’s my they’re my they’re my definitions um kind of practical definitions no that makes absolute that’s that’s that that really just demystifies um the understanding of each of these terms which are often used very interchangeably uh when you read articles about them um so cronia when you go into the food and beverage industry today uh let us assume that none of this exists or a comp is not adopting serialization they’re not adopting traceability measures they’re
Premsai Sainathan 06:05
not adopting tracking measures um what are all the problems that can occur uh to the company and to the consumer wow well I think we don’t have enough time to just talk about all of that you know it’s it’s it’s not possible I don’t think to be competitive organization in food and beverage without some measures in this space um I’d like to break it down into like four sections okay so um uh which I which is kind of a breaking down of the supply chain the and there problems in each of
Gráinne Lynch 06:39
these sections within a company there is sourcing and procurement the first one um Goods inwards into a manufacturing facility so reing of product manufacturing and then outbound distribution and then I suppose the fifth one really is the engagement with the customer actually that’s probably so so um and also there’s six thinking about this out Cloud there’s the entire reverse Logistics chain as well in the event of an issue so there are six um okay at each and every stage in this in
Premsai Sainathan 07:12
this uh life cycle that I’ve described from from production to cons to to to a customer and back um it’s not possible to know exactly what’s happening without some measure of visibility into where where products are moving where ingredients are moving how they’re being sourced where they’re being sourced from um the ability to St manufacturers in today’s world absolutely need to be able to stand over the ingredients that they’re putting into their products because they need to be able to adhere
Gráinne Lynch 07:46
to an awful lot of requirements in terms of that product that they’re putting on the shelf for consumers now not that’s not the case for every Market in the world there are more stringent guidelines in certain places in the world but if you go with the most stringent um production requirements a manufacturer of a food product will need to be able to have confidence that the ingredients that they have for their products are high quality or at the Quality they require for their processes and they need to be able to stand over
Premsai Sainathan 08:18
it and repeat it products tend to be repeated you know you you have to have a consistent quality in the products that are released let’s go back to the milk let’s go back talk about something with additional additional processing such as yogurt or cheese so understanding where that product has come from making sure that that product is sourced from reputable Growers and farmers and producers making sure that there is a a consistent quality around it making sure that the manufacturing is
Gráinne Lynch 08:46
correct that it’s distributed in the right temperature and It ultimately gets to the consumer in good quality all of these are there’s problems all over this um not because because you’re dealing with a variable product you know you’re dealing with a milk product at the center of this which of course is going to be variable from season to season from location to location from producer to producer so getting something that is you the manufacturer can have confidence that you’re getting um and across the
Premsai Sainathan 09:15
board quality so that you can produce your product in a consistent way the only way to handle that is through better sourcing and procurement visibility of producers and Growers making sure that when you get that product into your factory that you’re understanding where it’s coming from and it’s not getting you know it’s not get expiring or anything before before you get to use it in your in your produce you’ve got relationships with your Distributors with your wholesalers and
Gráinne Lynch 09:43
ultimately with the retailer of your products so that you can you know there’s a lot of there’s an awful lot of stuff in that space around product placement Etc but just making sure simply that the product is of the right quality so that the consumer can buy it at the end um I think the biggest issue really is consistent quality and visibility of where the products are or either ingredients or finished products is key to ensuring that that quality is consistent from end to end you’ve asked about the problems I
Premsai Sainathan 10:17
suppose I haven’t really answered that exactly but I’m just saying that you know without without having certain um processes and procedures in place to ensure that you’re actually you know driving towards that ultimate quality I think I think the problem start to create R it’s um it’s not like you haven’t answered my questions on the problems but uh you actually uh drove me to think about an interesting example with uh one of the clients that we worked with uh so this client manufactures chocolates right so
Gráinne Lynch 10:54
for the manufacturing of the chocolates uh what is very critical is that they need to actually get the right kind of of course milk right but but more importantly the right kind of Coco and Coco mostly comes from one part of the world which is Western Africa but it’s also grown in many other places um and this this this client needs to make sure that um they not only have the the right inventory and the stock of Coco to ensure that their manufacturing plant is running on time but but they also uh
Premsai Sainathan 11:27
need to ensure that it’s coming from that vendor and you know they know that it’s not changed hands anywhere else so I think this might this might be very very applicable to them and I’m probably guessing they’re already invested in some bit of uh you know serialization and traceability uh but um uh of course U Downstream for the same same chocolate manufacturer um one of their concerns were that um once the chocolate is manufactured right uh and it shipped to warm climates uh in parts of South Asia
Gráinne Lynch 12:05
the chocolate starts getting those white dots which you which you must have seen which uh is largely due to the rapid heating and cooling off that so the challenge was they did not know where it was happening whether it was happening at their warehouse whether it was happening at the hands of their third party Logistics providers or whether it was actually happening in the hands of the distributor or at the store uh so um by introducing tracability measures and of course you know um you know combining track and
Premsai Sainathan 12:43
Trace uh with data and analytics uh they were able to they were able to start not only understanding where the excursions are happening uh and in whose custody uh but also proactively start preventing these excursions so um although you did not you did not give me the example of problem what you were talking about really made me visualize this grania and I’m starting to see how important this becomes especially as food and beverage companies are now starting to build their brands of organic food companies
Gráinne Lynch 13:22
uh who are starting to say that um I would be able to guarantee you that your product comes from this Farm um have you have you ever dealt with any of these kind of challenges where um a brand is trying to to tell their customers exactly where the products coming from have you dealt with any of these organic uh food companies because I see a lot of advertisements in fact they talk about the farm they in fact show pictures of where your milk is coming from so at at at the at the grocery store that I go to
Premsai Sainathan 13:58
um they actually have this this milk from Happy cows which is coming from a part of I think Scotland uh or Scotland or Ireland uh and uh as a customer it’s very interesting for me um to to kind of question that right to say is this really coming all the way from Scotland uh to where I am in Mumbai and uh if so uh how are we making sure that nothing is compromised in the way I think that that’s there’s a lot so much that you said there that I’d love to respond to so let’s just talk about there’s two
Gráinne Lynch 14:35
other aspects to to traceability which which we talked about first okay and you’ve talked about them right there in your example so we’ve got the ability to track something and visibility of where it is the ability to look back and see where it’s come from which is traceability but what we what that gives us is transparency in our product if we if we if we control that information and that um that gives transparency about where the product has come from and ultimately trackability traceability and
Premsai Sainathan 15:06
transparency together put in the correct way builds trust and builds trust builds your engagement with your consumer so so therefore I think that um there are the kinds of questions we think about when we go to the store can I really trust that this product this is just it’s not just some clip art that has been put on to the product um can I really trust that that is in fact from those producers in that region and I’m not just being you know something isn’t just being marketed to me without anything
Gráinne Lynch 15:38
substance behind it what I think companies really need to do is to start Gathering data on their own supply chain sometimes the likes of the chocolate company that you’ve mentioned don’t always know where their Growers of those co cocoa beans are they may know they’re from Western Africa they may they may know the country they may know the region it’s not necessarily always in their interest to know exactly where the Growers are they don’t typically tend to know they tend to be from a from a
Premsai Sainathan 16:08
Cooperative or from a managed Source or from a Trader of that commodity into their supply chain so but if they’re going to go down the certification route or if they’re going to start uh saying that it’s it’s organic if they’re going to start saying that these are from Happy cows these these milk products then they sure as hell better be ready to put that information in front of the customer when you people like yourself and myself question question whether or not this is absolutely true and whether this is real
Gráinne Lynch 16:37
so they have to build the transparency into the information and they have to make that available to the consumer in some way there’s lots of technologies that can Aid that process and then that that Circle builds trust which ensures that that that consumer like myself is going to come back and that buy that product again so that’s that’s the trackability traceability ility transparency and Trust chain of chain of information that I that I that I like to talk about um let me just just hone in a
Premsai Sainathan 17:09
little bit there on a couple of other items that you mentioned in specifically in relation to Chocolate so you mentioned coca beans and you mentioned um certification you mentioned organic I me there are a couple of other considerations as well around that particular commodity but also other Commodities so manufacturers are under a lot and rightly so under a lot of pressure to prove where products are coming from but a lot of a lot of of products are sourced from areas in the world that are in different types have
Gráinne Lynch 17:37
different types of challenges have different there’s different types of conflict going on in the world there are um around Coco there is an awful lot of um countries in the world that don’t necessarily monitor the ages of the people that are in yes are in the supply chain working in the grow and growing and that for certain consumers is a big issue so non-child labor is a huge issue so how does a how does a buyer of hundreds of thousands of tons of of raw material Coco raw material per anom how
Premsai Sainathan 18:10
do they know for definite that their product is not child labor uh children were not involved in in the harvesting of their cocoa beans but it’s really really hard it’s really hard to know that so the owners on proving that gets pushed down the supply chain it gets so the the suppliers get asked to prove it and their suppliers get asked to prove it and there and then it goes down to the Traders and then it goes down to the Growers now how efficient or how effective it is when you know there are
Gráinne Lynch 18:43
awful lot of really really good examples where that can be proven but there it is really really difficult we’ll take other examples like um ingredients that a lot of consumers like myself are are starting to really think about palm oil there’s issues around deforestation in certain regions um there are issues around deforestation in certain other parts of the world e for the actual paper pulp itself there are issues around nearly every single piece of ingredient that you might be able to
Premsai Sainathan 19:12
think of going into most products there are an awful lot of considerations it’s really really confusing and it’s very very it’s very data intensive and it’s quite manual to manage all of these processes within a company um so I think there are probably there were probably opportunities to get a little bit better in this space um let’s just go back to traceability and visibility though just for a moment because was was um are these kinds of issues um and there are plenty of solutions for them they can’t
Gráinne Lynch 19:44
be done in their own you really need an in order to really drive to endtoend visibility and traceability of products in food and beverage especially there needs to be cooperation between the organizations to report the right to first of all to report certain types of data that may not have been relevant in the past and secondly to trust each other with that information because if a manufacturer is going to be putting certified organic a consumer is going to buy that on that basis if that turns out to be not true
Premsai Sainathan 20:17
then that Brands and that name of that brand is severely impacted with impacts the bottom line of those companies they absolutely have to do it correctly but to do that again sorry back the point they they really need to start working and collaborating with with with their suppliers so instead of a supplier being just a onetoone relationship it it really does become need to become a little bit more close Mich where the information that relates to the products authenticity it’s it’s uh its location
Gráinne Lynch 20:48
for growing its quality of growing and it’s and its certification in in the case of an organic product um needs to be reported up in a way that can be Vis be transparent and and be trustable by manufacturers so they can pass that information on so we’re seeing I think a kind of a revolution when it comes to these types of issues they’ve been slowly growing for the last few years it’s very complex but I think we’re really starting to see that the nature of Supply chains really have to be you
Premsai Sainathan 21:18
know they have to be much more resilient in terms of the relationships that are built with suppliers so that we can understand where where where things have come from um you start so maybe pause there no no no this is a very interesting point I was just trying to ask you a follow on question to that which is um how can you actually get all of this together so you said you know it’s not something that you can um you can kind of it’s very hard to um it’s very hard to bring these pieces together
Gráinne Lynch 21:55
what are the kind of solutions that are available in the market to address this and who are the who are possibly kind of some of the solution providers here that a food and beverage company who’s looking to get uh all of the te’s that you talked about in place uh should approach okay so a a large multinational company who is in a a chocolate business will have multiple multiple suppliers suppliers they might have in the number of tens of thousands of suppliers so managing that and managing that data is
Premsai Sainathan 22:29
a huge Challenge and um staying on top of the accuracy of that data is a Hu huge challenge so there are companies that will help to manage supplier and procurement related information and help you check the accuracy of that I suppose I bit I don’t really want to say who but there are companies out there that do that um there are some companies that do that do that in a very sort of uh much more intelligent kind of a way that because we because there’s so much data available there are you know it it takes
Gráinne Lynch 22:59
an awful lot of effort and an awful lot of hours to check everything so there are there are companies out there that are providing more intelligent types of solutions for that um so therefore you a a means to double check the the data that you have on suppliers and Growers is is one thing that I think would be very very beneficial secondly how do they do that grania that’s kind of my my next question it’s very interesting because you’re dealing with if you’re talking about C again you’re dealing with so
Premsai Sainathan 23:30
many suppliers so how do they authenticate and know that you know these suppliers that you’re working with uh do not have their products you know touched by somebody uh who is a minor yeah that’s a great question so there there is one company that comes to mind in this space and they’re called tealbook teal book um I met them recently so they have a really really smart um capability that actually uses information publicly available in online sources as an initial troll of potential supplier and and procurement supplier
Gráinne Lynch 24:08
information that information is is gathered up as a as a first pass of the types of procurement in uh sorry supplier information um such as um company names locations addresses Etc um that of course is augmented with particular information around uh what a company might require so um you know if they you know vat numbers Etc it’s there it is added and enriched um so what they have done is they actually have the capability to see all of these suppliers as an entire network they can actually see because of
Premsai Sainathan 24:47
the amount of time that they have spent gathering this data both from public sources and augmented and enriched by other types of information that they have access to they can actually see and predict what is going to be the knock on effect of certain types of shortages in the supply chain um because of that that access to the data amazing mind-blowing types of technology so that is one that I I’m definitely going to be looking into a little bit more um there are also an awful lot of certification companies
Gráinne Lynch 25:20
that will provide an like a capability for for um certain types of um Commodities and suppliers to be to be certified um some of them have different types of of um you know there there’s quite a lot of them first of all and some of them have different types of of leanings so in the sustainability space there’s a company called ecovadis there’s quite there’s a couple of other ones as well um but then they will they will really really be testing a company capability and our suppliers capability
Premsai Sainathan 25:54
around a sustainability um cap capacity so if if if a company who’s supplying cocoa beans has a certification that says that they are of a sustainability rating then a manufacturer or a or a procurement individual within a manufacturing organization has a better capability to trust the source of that information because that certification around organic or sustainability or whatever they’re looking for has been validated by an external company so there are just two examples examples of the suppliers
Gráinne Lynch 26:27
that I see in the market very interesting and so how does U the visibility layer come into this and how can that be integrated into um you know the traceability and the serialization that you talked about the reason I’m asking asking this uh cronia is because um all the te’s that you talked about right um when when it has to come together it’s definitely cannot be done by you know one solution provider right and you got to get all of this information integrated um even if you’re
Premsai Sainathan 27:03
dealing with just one supplier or a few suppliers um have you seen this work or if if all of these layers are not integrated together um how do you envision um the components actually coming together more from a technological perspective that’s a really great question um I don’t think it exists yet and I’d love to be contradicted on that I don’t think there is one technological solution that integrates all of these different aspects to actually fully deliver on the vision of trackability traceability transparency
Gráinne Lynch 27:48
in order to get to a point where everything is trustable I I don’t think it exists now there are an awful lot of technologies that have that capability but integrating all of them and we haven’t even talked about blockchain so the can I can I can I ask you one one more question do do erps have the ability today to capture all of this information so I was just actually going to say that probably from what I have seen Erp systems definitely do have certain aspects but Erp systems tend to be modular in their
Premsai Sainathan 28:22
construction and what whilst whilst we might have a sourcing urement part of an Erp system or a batch management part to an Erp system or a distributor management part to to it um and and then we might have visibility sources of information coming in um on goods inwards and maybe in the distribution part they don’t tend to always perfectly play together and they don’t always seem to be integrated to the same level of detail there may be some sort of Milestone Management capability on the
Gráinne Lynch 28:56
goods inwards um reporting at certain Milestone points where therefore the once a product let’s say reaches a warehouse there will be a reporting Mark where where it reaches an internal Warehouse would be another one for example that’s managed by one kind of module but tracking um batch like what kind of product is used for this what kind how much product how much ingredient is used for my my batch of product here is managed by a different module um managing the inventory within a manufacturing process
Premsai Sainathan 30:04
say technology but they be seem to be the same different data points that go into different processes so therefore there to me there doesn’t seem to be an absolute end to end now first of all when I think about this of course I as a traceability person I’d love to be able to see absolutely everything end to end in a great big dashboard that I could just see where everything is at any one time um that would be the goal and that would be the dream um but I think there are a couple of problems fundamentally within
Gráinne Lynch 30:36
business functions that are certainly preventing this dream from becoming a reality in the short term um and until I talked about getting closer with suppliers and creating an ecosystem and and maybe to be able to exchange information better the same sort of challenges exist within companies companies are are are siloed in their in their organization so the quality supply chain manufacturing head of function it Finance Etc and they tend to manage their portfolios in different ways with different types of data so the folks
Premsai Sainathan 31:10
that are going to be worried about the inbound yeah the folks are going to be worried about the manufacturing or the outbound so so in a way was would be nice for someone who has a bird’s eye view of everything to know exactly where everything is the business value has to be the key component to that to allow all of the different functions to engage to get something out of it so unless my manufacturing or VP of manufacturer is going to get something some some benefit some insight or business value into that
Gráinne Lynch 31:45
then it’s not going to be possible so I would like to you know I think there is business value to be unlocked in ensuring that the head of production knows where stuff is coming from and where and where the outbound supply chain Logistics delivery people might even actually understand where there might be delays on the inbound I think that would be amazing but until we can until we can articulate that the technology exists and technology and and articulate what kind of business value is in that which we’re working on um and
Premsai Sainathan 32:18
until we can make sure that the metrics that those business functions are are are being judged on um uh then we have to figure out what way to make that relevant to people so um so for example when I’m in a production environment it’s batches out the door how many batches are completed on a daily basis that are that are delivered um the the logistics people are going to be worried about how many how many shipments were successfully delivered the people in logistics don’t necessarily W worry about the amount of
Gráinne Lynch 32:53
returns that they’re getting because they’re not necessarily judged on it the people in production might be concerned about the returns if it if it identifies an issue in their production process but in general they’re not going to be worried about the value of those returns so every single organiza business function is organized based on the the the the key performance indicators that that are relevant to them so unless we start to change and relate those kpis to each other then that’s that’s the only way
Premsai Sainathan 33:25
that an end to end sort of tra visibility and Trace ility system might ultimately get built for overall visibility for people that’s very interesting ground because um we had a similar experience with one of one of one of our clients too where this is not even about sourcing and procurement are the four functions that you talked about uh this is within Logistics and transportation right so uh so the charter of transportation is of course you know uh ship this thing on the cheapest possible mode of transport to
Gráinne Lynch 33:59
get it from point A to point B right so that’s their kpis and then you got the logistics kpis which is ensure that you always have stock but you’re also running low on inventory because that’s where the saving according to them is right so if you’re actually shipping on the cheapest mode of transport and you’re actually going to take twice the amount of time or building that uncertainty of when it’s going to reach or not the person the other node is actually going to be stalking a lot more
Premsai Sainathan 34:25
because uh they don’t know when their replenishments are going to arrive and this was exactly what was happening to them um so so very interestingly when you know the the visibility implementation happened for them uh they were they actually said that you know we brought about a culture shift in our organization where Logistics and transportation are actually today talking on the same page uh where you know the organization is now able to see whether the cost savings is more because the inventory is lower or is the cost
Gráinne Lynch 35:01
saving more because you’re spending more on Transportation right so uh I I totally see this challenge of you know getting all of these four functions together uh that you initially talked about um but gronia maybe Switching gears a little bit um as a food and beverage leader say a chocolate company or a or or or yogurt company or a um let’s say even a even a even a even a produce or an ice cream company what is the low what are the lowest hanging levers that I could tap so that I can get on board with uh my
Premsai Sainathan 35:40
digital transformation uh in this aspect so I think that an over lot of companies have a lot of data already um they already know so much about where their products are coming from from where they’re going to and how how they manufacture um I I really see that the there’s what I think is a really really big Trend at the moment is consumer knowledge and consumer engagement and enablement so just to there’s so there’s so there’s so many right but if you’re trying to build a brand in sure repeated
Gráinne Lynch 36:25
sales then the best way to do that is to have a relationship with the consumer um so how would how do you build that relationship so I think building that relationship is key and what kind of information you might serve up to those uh types of to your consumers um you all most companies already have this information so I think what what we need to do is we need to get we need to start connecting the capabilities and the knowledge holders within our organizations to try and think about the product that has been
Premsai Sainathan 37:04
produced from a consumer’s point of view and then start to build stories that are relevant to the consumer that are absolutely transparent and and uh true stories and then start to actually share them with consumers so how do you do that what’s the what’s the easiest way to do that it’s somehow to take a digitize the product is the idea so you take a product and around that product be that um an end product now that a consumer like myself might buy in the store if that’s a chocolate bar you know
Gráinne Lynch 37:43
put something on the packaging that is seen by a consumer that is actually to do with the company’s uh the manufacturers capacity their capability their their their their the reason for being and Link that to the consumer experience so I think this is the biggest Trend that we’re going to see which is the digitization of the products um all of the Technologies exist and can go into that another day they can be there’s there are standard ways to do all of this with the creativity and the magic comes by
Premsai Sainathan 38:18
really understanding what the consumer is looking for they’re looking for something that they can trust and serving up information that is absolutely true to underpin the trust to build relationships with the consumers to ensure replen to ensure repeat repeat buying the the trick is to get information that already exists within the organization and to do that I think you know bring in Creative people bring in people that are that are really really understand brand and really understand understand story and
Gráinne Lynch 38:51
understand the power of it and I think that’s to me is the largest lwh hanging fruit wonderful gr I really like your closing comments uh that it always begins from the customer and you work backwards because um what you’re saying also makes sense in the fact that as you’re doing this you’re also going to start seeing your business results which is also very important where your customers are starting to trust you more your your your revenues are starting to starting to look healthier and now
Premsai Sainathan 39:24
you’re also able to gather the confidence to kind of move this one step at a time um up the um up the food chain of the supply chain if you were to were to call that great gronia thank you so much for sharing your um knowledge experience and perspective on this topic uh food and beverage is very CR it’s a very critical um industry right now especially with you know uh the covid second wave and the lockdowns and all of that that so I think all eyes are on are are as much on on ensuring essential
Gráinne Lynch 40:02
services are always moving and you’re getting what you expect out of your product so thank you grania look forward to chatting with you again thank you hi my name is Scott Ms and I’m one of the hosts of the supply chain Tech podcast with romei on this podcast we talk to supply chain heroes from around the world about everything ranging from the disruptions related to Supply chains their personal experiences with tracking Technologies strategies to build resilience and much much more we already have some recommended videos for
Scott Mears 40:36
you to the side of me and if any of this sounds interesting to you do subscribe to our YouTube channel and hit the Bell icon so you don’t miss another rby video I’ll see you next time
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