Solutions for Food and Beverage

From manufacturers to grocers and restaurant chains, companies that are part of the food and beverage industry face several specialized challenges. To control costs and avoid product spoilage, it's critical for them to optimize their inventory and supply chains. However, constantly changing consumer preferences and nutritional trends make it difficult to accurately forecast demand. Additionally, food safety and legislative factors add to the pressures of the food and beverage industry. The Intelligent Enterprise addresses these challenges with data analytics.

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Distribution Center Operations

Enable DC supervisors to streamline warehouse operations and better engage with their employees.

Customer Analysis

Utilize powerful analytics to better understand changing consumer preferences, build brand loyalty, and drive revenue growth.

Digital Employee Badge

Empower employees to securely access offices and corporate IT systems by leveraging smartphone-based multifactor authentication.

Financial Analysis

Streamline enterprise performance management and financial reporting processes and enable management to have access to critical data.

Marketing and Promotion Analysis

Optimize promotions and proactively adjust marketing campaigns to increase effectiveness.

Product Analysis

Analyze and track product aspects including development, quality, profitability, and waste.

Sales Productivity

Help boost the productivity and performance of CPG sales teams with instant access to critical systems and information.

Vendor Portal

Provide CPG companies and retailers with timely, valuable business insight to boost collaboration, drive performance improvement, and reduce waste.

Production Facilities Management

Allow facilities managers to better handle production line inefficiencies, confirm regulation compliance, ensure product quality, and supervise their employees.

Digital Loyalty Card

Transform and personalize user experiences across customer channels.

Store and Restaurant Inspection

​​Streamline the inspection and auditing process with apps that enable mobile, on-site data entry and fast information sharing.

Supply Chain Management

Help minimize delays, reduce inefficiencies, and maximize profit margins by providing real-time visibility into supply chain operations.

Operations Management

Provide managers with real-time insight into operations and performance so they can make better decisions and take immediate action to address issues.

Distribution Center Operations

The Challenge

Due to the risk of product spoilage, it’s critical for distribution centers in the food and beverage industry to operate efficiently. That’s why DC supervisors need a tool that allows them to access the information they need, instantly.

The Solution

MicroStrategy Mobile apps provide DC supervisors with access to the information they need to efficiently run their distribution centers, so they don’t have to leave the warehouse floor. Using these apps, supervisors can scan barcodes for item details, initiate backstock pulls, and proactively adjust shipping and receiving process workflows— all from their mobile device. In order to help improve safety and regulatory compliance, they can instantly capture images of workplace hazards or product quality issues and upload them to the appropriate system. And with access to dashboards and realtime reports, operations managers can more effectively monitor productivity, streamline operations, and reduce product spoilage. With an app that frees them from the back office, supervisors can stay on the warehouse floor to directly engage and manage employees. Using these apps, supervisors can log conversations with their workers and track attendance, training, safety, and quality of work. Comments can be input directly into the app, and employees can acknowledge that the conversations took place via the signature capture, increasing their accountability.

Distribution Center Operations

Customer Analysis

The Challenge

Food and beverage companies often struggle to piece together a 360-degree view of their customers and fail to understand their customers’ unique profiles and preferences.

The Solution

MicroStrategy helps companies make sense of customer data across all channels so they can stay in tune with market needs and proactively take action to help drive the bottom line. Using powerful advanced analytics, users can visualize shopping patterns and analyze customer profiles based on factors such as gender, age, and purchase history, and appropriately group customers for marketing programs. Informed by these insights, organizations can create more targeted promotions, tailor store assortments to specific clientele, and adjust menu options and pricing. And with powerful data mining tools, analysts can conduct market basket analysis to refine planograms and promotional strategies. As a result, food and beverage companies can strengthen customer retention and increase loyalty.

Customer Analysis

Digital Employee Badge

The Challenge

Many food and beverage companies use separate forms of credentials to secure access to physical workspaces and IT systems. This creates a fragmented approach to identity management and access control, and makes it more difficult to manage security and productivity across the organization.

The Solution

MicroStrategy’s mobile identity platform, Usher, enables organizations to easily manage and control employee access to approved corporate facilities and IT systems. Using Usher, companies can issue a secure digital identity badge, delivered via smartphone app, to each employee. Usher lets users unlock doors and gates by simply walking up to them or tapping a digital key on their phone. It provides highly configurable and convenient multi-factor authentication features, including push notifications, biometrics, one-time passwords, face-toface validation, and Bluetooth proximity. By seamlessly integrating with existing facilities’ systems and mobile applications, Usher creates a frictionless experience for users as they move throughout the enterprise.

Digital Employee Badge

Financial Analysis

The Challenge

Food and beverage companies often struggle to maintain various financial reporting tools and are in need of an enterprise-grade analytics solution that can handle large, complex data sets and ensures consistency.

The Solution

Financial analysis and accountability is critical for every food and beverage company. MicroStrategy’s enterprise-grade financial analysis solutions empower employees, from executives to analysts, with the insight they need to more efficiently manage their daily business, make better strategic decisions, and effectively collaborate with colleagues. These applications easily integrate data from a wide range of sources and allow users to seamlessly access analytics and financial information about products, customers, operations, and more. Using powerful data visualization capabilities, business groups can identify opportunities faster and take timely, targeted action. Application users can access a secure, personalized view of the financial information that is most relevant to their role. By mobilizing these applications, organizations can not only achieve major productivity gains, they can also achieve significant paper cost savings.

Financial Analysis

Marketing and Promotion Analysis

The Challenge

In order to expand market share, it’s critical for restaurants, grocery chains, and CPG manufacturers to maximize the return on their marketing, advertising, and trade promotion dollars.

The Solution

MicroStrategy helps food and beverage companies analyze data from a variety of sources so they can maximize the value of their marketing and promotion efforts. Using comprehensive dashboards and reports, organizations can get an understanding of customer purchasing behavior related to promotions, transaction history, loyalty program membership, and market basket analysis. This valuable insight enables restaurant and grocery chains to better manage efforts around advertising, pricing, and store planograms. Additionally, marketers can take advantage of real-time analytics to adjust campaigns on the fly to increase effectiveness. MicroStrategy solutions also allow CPG manufacturers to better manage marketing and trade promotion spending. Beyond providing visibility into performance, these solutions also help manufacturers direct promotional efforts while on-site in stores. For example, by referencing a mobile app, brand reps can check to make sure that a retailer is following trade promotion display guidelines. These tools incorporate transactional input forms that empower users to submit data, input notes, and capture photos of display issues — all directly from the app. As a result, CPG manufacturers help ensure their trade promotion spending is having the desired effect.

Marketing and Promotion Analysis

Product Analysis

The Challenge

To control costs and avoid product spoilage, it’s critical for procurement departments to optimize their inventory and supply chains.

The Solution

MicroStrategy Analytics solutions help food and beverage companies optimize how they source, develop, purchase, place, and price items. These powerful tools provide procurement departments with the insight they need to customize offerings and inventory levels based on local needs, while minimizing food costs and waste. Exception-based reporting, which highlights outliers such as best and worst-selling products, provides early visibility into issues so category managers can immediately modify future purchase orders, adjust pricing plans, and negotiate with suppliers. Comprehensive, intuitive dashboards make it easy for users to understand how various promotions, brands, and business categories are performing. Additionally, these solutions enable category managers to evaluate individual recipe costs, supplier performance, product quality, and food regulation compliance. With these tools, procurement departments have the insight they need to better position their product offerings to help drive revenue.

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Sales Productivity

The Challenge

The most frequently used sales systems fail to provide a complete view of the customer and lack the analytical insight needed for sales teams to be successful in the field.

The Solution

MicroStrategy empowers food and beverage manufacturers with powerful analytical and mobile sales enablement solutions that help sales people work more effectively and efficiently when in the field. Armed with powerful mobile apps, CPG sales reps have real-time access to sales data and analytics, enabling them to make more accurate pipeline forecasts and identify potential upsell opportunities in their existing accounts. These apps provide them with the ability to inspect product promotion displays in stores, compare results with guidelines, as well as capture and submit photos. Sales reps can access store performance information and suggest promotions to retailers for underperforming items. These solutions also provide sales reps with multimedia content, such as presentations and product videos, in order to help drive meaningful conversations with customers. With offline access and mobile write-back capabilities, sales reps can update account information and forecasts, create sales quotes, and log meeting activities from anywhere— regardless of internet connectivity. That means that sales reps don’t have to wait until the end of the day to complete administrative tasks and can focus more energy on closing business.

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Vendor Portal

The Challenge

Without access to real-time business intelligence, CPG vendors and merchants don’t have the up-to-date insight they need to effectively communicate, negotiate, and drive sales.

The Solution

MicroStrategy provides relevant and timely data to CPG manufacturers and merchants, fostering collaboration that helps drive efficiency, control costs, and improve sales performance. With MicroStrategy, CPG vendors and merchants have a secure, common view of current data related to product and category sales performance, inventory, profitability, supply chain, and promotions. Retailers control the data that individual vendors can view, and vendors are able to drive better business results for their products and categories. These solutions also help vendors benchmark their performance against peers at an anonymous level, manage product forecasts, and better understand how they can use promotional funds effectively. With a single version of the truth, merchants are able to communicate more effectively with vendors throughout the season which helps facilitate better negotiations.

Vendor Portal

Production Facilities Management

The Challenge

Production facility managers are tasked with everything from overseeing floor operations to ensuring worker safety. When they have to go to a back office to access reports and input data into systems, it disrupts their ability to effectively manage the production floor.

The Solution

MicroStrategy provides managers with the tools they need to address the specialized challenges of running a food and beverage production facility. With MicroStrategy Mobile, production managers can easily access real-time reports to analyze costs, track materials, and weigh alternative scenarios impacting production — all from their smartphones or tablets. Armed with mobile write-back capabilities, they can input information for inventory and quality checks, capture signatures, and submit approvals while on the move. Floor managers and employees can view intuitive dashboards to visualize data at a glance and make quick decisions in order to help improve reception, processing, and fulfillment times. Additionally, threshold-based alerts help managers to quickly identify potential issues such as sudden changes in a facility’s temperature, aging inventory, or quality-related issues. These apps are also a powerful workforce management tool. Managers can log conversations with their workers in regard to attendance, training, safety, and quality of work. Comments can be input directly into the app, and employees can acknowledge that the conversations took place via the signature capture, thus increasing their accountability.

Production Facilities Management

Digital Loyalty Card

The Challenge

Today’s digitally savvy customers expect a consistent, personalized experience across all brand channels. That’s why, to be successful, food and beverage companies must first develop a unified view of customers to better understand behavior and preferences.

The Solution

MicroStrategy’s mobile identity platform, Usher, provides businesses with a unified view of each customer. It does this by storing each customer’s identity as a digital badge on a mobile app, which ties that user’s profile to interactions they have with the brand, from online shopping to in-store visits. As a result, companies can get a 360-degree view of each customer. Retailers can tap into Usher’s powerful back-end analytics to combine customer, sales, and marketing data and build dashboards that provide real-time insight into customer preferences and habits. Using these tools, businesses can design personalized cross-channel experiences and help secure transactions. For example, as a customer enters a grocery store, Usher can trigger the delivery of a personalized coupon or promotion. Or, if a customer calls customer service, the representative can confirm the customer’s identity by using a time-limited passcode that’s displayed in the Usher app.

Digital Loyalty Card

Store and Restaurant Inspection

The Challenge

Store and restaurant inspectors spend too much time dealing with spreadsheets and can’t update systems from the field, making auditing processes slow, inefficient, and time consuming.

The Solution

MicroStrategy Mobile inspection apps reduce paperwork and time-intensive spreadsheet preparation, helping to ensure that auditors are working with the latest data. These solutions incorporate transactional input forms that empower inspectors to submit data directly from their app while on-site. They can immediately review inspection results with store/restaurant managers and spend more time coaching store teams. These apps also provide auditors with the ability to view audit history and analysis for stores in their territory and chain-wide, and with location awareness, they can map out which stores to visit next. By streamlining the inspection process, grocers and restaurant chains can increase audit efficiency, facilitate better internal communication, and improve productivity and profitability.

Store and Restaurant Inspection

Supply Chain Management

The Challenge

Food and beverage manufacturers, grocers, and restaurant chains must continually strive to eliminate delays and inefficiency from their supply chains in order to avoid product spoilage and out-of-stock situations.

The Solution

MicroStrategy gives food and beverage companies instant visibility into the end-toend health and status of their supply chains, providing the critical KPIs and threshold-based alerts necessary for fast decision-making. Applications and reports focused on distribution and/or production center activities enable organizations to better manage the workflow of production lines, receiving and shipping processes, and operating costs. These solutions also provide companies with visibility into KPIs related to shipping costs, units shipped, percent of truck capacity used, and driver performance. By delivering detailed insights into supplier invoice accuracy, ontime deliveries, and order fulfillment rates, these applications enable organizations to partner with their suppliers to improve their performance. Companies can fine-tune operations even further using threshold-based alerts for bottlenecks on the production line, out-of-stock products, or items that need to be expedited through shipping. Furthermore, predictive analytics allow organizations to align supply and demand by modeling hypothetical scenarios and forecasting demand based on historical information and trends. With this real-time insight, food and beverage companies can take informed, targeted steps to reduce transportation costs, optimize inventory levels, streamline production/ distribution center processes, and improve supplier performance and negotiations.

Supply Chain Management

Operations Management

The Challenge

Restaurant and store managers strive to control costs while increasing sales, providing excellent customer service, and ensuring food quality. To reduce time spent in the office, they need a one-stop shop for all of their information needs.

The Solution

MicroStrategy helps store and restaurant managers quickly access real-time sales, inventory, and customer information so they can analyze buying trends, evaluate promotion success, and benchmark their performance against peers. These apps give managers a single place for their information needs, providing access to training files, food safety information, corporate communications, documents and scorecards, sales best practices, customer reviews, and more. Data-driven ‘smart alerts’ help ensure that store personnel are focused on addressing highpriority issues related to out-of-stock products, labor management, or food expiration dates. Mobile write-back functionality enables app users to take action on insight directly from the selling floor, saving valuable time and helping drive revenue. These comprehensive, user-friendly apps empower managers to help make better decisions, improve productivity, and increase their focus on serving customers, coaching associates, and driving sales.

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