The food and beverage industry is growing at an accelerated pace worldwide. Consumers have grown accustomed to fresh and great quality products delivered to them promptly in safe and clean packaging all year around. Naturally, the supply chain has risen to meet the growing demands, making the whole process more elaborate but somewhat complicated.

While a growing industry brings many opportunities, it also brings its fair share of challenges. The extended supply chain includes many layers made up of producers, manufacturers, logistics companies, distributors, or suppliers. These individual parties collectively try to ensure that the product is supplied to the retail customer quickly and safely.

This means that challenges have to be overcome at several stages in the supply chain, including production, processing, packaging, storage and distribution. Failure to overcome these challenges at any stage can mean significant repercussions for the entire supply chain.  

Challenges Faced by Suppliers

These are some of the challenges faced by suppliers globally, leading to complexities and inefficiency, resulting in lower revenues for the business.  

Tracking the Order

Being able to track your customer’s order from the moment it’s placed to the time it arrives at their doorstep is integral for ensuring that the quality and safety of the product is maintained.

Not only that, but you need to be able to track the backorders as this will ensure that there are no shortages or wastages at your end. Suppliers right now are struggling with organizing all of this data comprising pending orders, orders being processed, the ones completed, and the ones cancelled.

The customers also need traceability of their orders, lack of which can be lousy service on your part. And also, create blinds spots in your order processing, increasing the risk of lags.

For the most part, this problem with traceability is due to outdated technology or tiresome paperwork, which leaves room for error and delays.

Ensuring the Quality and Safety of Stock

Highly- quality, organically produced food packaged safely, ensuring optimal levels of hygiene is a major trend in the food and beverage industry these days and is something a lot of suppliers struggle with.

This is mainly because they’re not able to manage their inventory very well. Due to a lack of real-time management and outdated manual procedures, there is a lack of updated information on the inventory, making maintaining the quality and safety of the stock fairly complicated.

Too much stock could end up spoiling, yet too little of it could lead to a lack of order fulfilment. To make sure either of these issues doesn’t arise, it’s crucial to be able to manage your inventory in real-time so that as a supplier, you know when you’re running out of something or when stock is a product is no longer fresh.

Communication Gaps

Communication is key in the food supply business. And we’re talking real-time communication, not emails sent out the previous week. But this is something a lot of suppliers struggle with.

As previously stated, there are a lot of stages that a product goes through in the supply chain, and lack of communication between different parties within the supply chain can cause a lot of problems such as delays, wastages, and other kinds of inefficient outcomes.

This lack of contact is a result of using outdated modes of communication. And for suppliers, this could mean a lot of hassle since they’re in a crucial spot of the supply chain connecting the producers and retail customers. By not communicating adequately with either party, they risk the entire process.

Rising Costs Due to Poor Order Management

And entire food supply business revolves around orders efficiently being processed round the clock. Failure in this aspect is a failure of the entire business. Unfortunately, this happens to be a significant concern with suppliers these days.

Due to the growing industry, orders are coming in great numbers, but not all suppliers can manage this influx of orders. Poor order management results in a bad reputation and incurs other costs to the business.

For instance, these could be additional fuel and storage costs. Or the business may hire more workforce to manage the orders, which may work in a short time but is still an additional cost for the business.

How Does OrderTron Help Suppliers Overcome These Challenges?

It’s pretty easy to see that many of these challenges faced by suppliers can be overcome with a single upgrade, i.e. technology. But technology is an expensive investment. It takes effort to incorporate it into an existing business and provide the staff with the relevant training required to make the most of it.

But with OrderTron, suppliers automatically overcome most of these issues. This is because it’s a comprehensive system, meaning that it’s your one-stop solution for a number of business operation, including inventory and order management, as well as order processing, and it also fulfils your finance and accounting needs.

Moreover, it integrates with your existing system making the transition much easier for your employees as well as your customers. And most importantly, it’s designed for small and mid-sized businesses, making it user friendly as well as affordable.

OrderTron’s Features That Are Incredibly Useful to Suppliers

While OrderTron is a powerful cloud-based online order management software designed for both suppliers and their customers, some of its features are especially beneficial for suppliers hoping to streamline and improve their order processing system.

Customer Accounts for Better Communication

OrderTron enables you to create individual accounts for each of your customers. This allows you to put all of the data related to a single customer in one space, making it easily accessible with a few clicks.

Using these customer accounts, you can easily manage the incoming orders and process them in bulk, ensuring minimal effort and maximum productivity.

A Comprehensive Catalog to Manage Products

Having a proper catalogue with complete control and customization abilities helps suppliers set up and define their products quickly and efficiently. OrderTron also has a product import wizard, which helps to expedite the entire process significantly.

Having the catalogue at their disposal gives suppliers the power to manage their products at great speed effectively.

Order Management With A Few Clicks

When it comes to the food and beverages industry, orders have to be processed quickly. Because if one doesn’t do it fast enough, somebody else will, which would reduce the market share in the long run—not a great outcome for any business.

OrderTron is brilliant at managing orders. From real-time tracking to every detail of the order, including the exact quantity, billing, shipment and any changes to the order, it manages it all!

With its advanced features, you can also generate picking slips and invoices to help your staff and customer stay on the same page, thus reducing the chance of a communication gap. Having everything in one digital space also saves your employees from the hassle of data entry, making the entire process much quicker and more efficient.

Ensure Safety Through Digitally Integrated Warehouses and Real-time Stock Control

A lot of problems in food supply businesses are associated with the stock, storage and wastage. But with OrderTron on board, it’ll be like having a digital eye over the stock at all times. Using bin locations, you can create multiple warehouses. Every product you purchase can be exported to a particular warehouse where you can monitor it until it’s dispatched to the customer.

Not only can you control your stock through using different warehouses, but OrderTron also enables you to manage all your stock using various tools. These allow counting, transfers and any other kinds of adjustments you need to make to the existing stock organized by batch numbers and expiry dates.

This results in accuracy, thus leading to reduced wastage or shortage.

Impressive Reporting Leading to Better Business Management Overall

Having well-analyzed data can help put things in perspective for a business. In a food supply business, this is even more essential in order to maintain a high level of quality and quick service.

One of OrderTron’s most useful feature for suppliers is the cumulative reports it can provide. These reports outline everything from orders to products and customers. Having these accurate reports at the tip of your finger can help make important decisions related to order purchasing, pricing, and stock management.

Additionally, the multifunctional dashboard in the OrderTron app offers a quick view of the business’s revenue status, products in top demands, as well as most active customers and access to recent orders. Moreover, your customers will have access to relevant statistics related to their orders on their personal applications.

Are You A Supplier Hoping to Learn More About OrderTron?

OrderTron is a modern solution for suppliers hoping to upgrade within reasonable terms. It’s not easy to integrate most specialized software into an existing business, nor is it an easy transition for your staff or customers.

However, OrderTron is an affordable and practical solution for mid and small-sized businesses as it offers opportunities to tailor the order management software based on the unique requirements of your individual business.

If you’re a supplier hoping to learn more about OrderTron and how it can help your business, get in touch with us, and we’ll walk you through all its features that can help streamline your business operations.