Sponsored by SafetyChain Software program
Each documentation hole represents a major enterprise vulnerability. Meals and beverage manufacturing leaders face unprecedented challenges as 2025 unfolds. With the FDA’s Meals Traceability Rule implementation accelerating, heightened ESG reporting necessities, and more and more refined customer-mandated compliance packages, the documentation burden has advanced from an operational concern to a strategic crucial.
On this unique Q&A with Dean Brown, CEO of SafetyChain Software program, we discover how digitizing meals security and high quality assurance (FSQA) packages delivers measurable enterprise worth nicely past compliance. Find out how forward-thinking corporations are leveraging compliance modernization to attain multi-million greenback margin enhancements, unlock new market alternatives, and supply the visibility mandatory for true enterprise threat administration.
Q: What measurable ROI metrics have your prospects sometimes seen within the first 12 months after digitizing their program administration?
Dean Brown: Usually, our prospects will see payback in lower than one 12 months, and that’s normally pushed by phenomenal will increase in productiveness.
Considered one of our prospects, Ajinomoto, noticed a 36% improve in productiveness. One other one among our prospects was in a position to cut back value by over $5 million simply in 12 months one. At that time they have been pretty small, so it’s a major impression on margin.
Yearly, it’s a compounding profit that our prospects will sometimes see 1 to three% will increase in yield and, mediumly, 25 to 35% will increase in productiveness. For low margin companies, like a lot of our prospects, that’s a major approach to transfer the needle.
The best way we give it some thought is: digitizing is definitely not a value line. It’s in all probability the quickest capital mission our prospects will ever get to inexperienced gentle.
Q: With meals and beverage producers juggling inner, regulatory, and buyer compliance packages concurrently, what are the commonest inefficiencies you’ve noticed in corporations nonetheless utilizing paper-based or spreadsheet techniques?
Dean Brown: I’m frequently stunned by what number of corporations are nonetheless struggling to make that journey. And the impression is substantial.
We joke about paper being your slowest worker and doubtless your costliest temp. In our trade surveys, we see the dearth of digital having actual quantitative impression. Usually, it may possibly steal two to 3 hours per shift due to errors and gradual corrections. A few of our knowledge reveals it may possibly impression as a lot as 0.5% of income over the course of a 12 months, with failure to appropriate or failure to well timed appropriate considerably including up.
Grupo Navis, one among our prospects, was in a position to reclaim 800 hours of labor by transferring from paper to digital. It’s like loss of life by a thousand paper cuts. Our prospects are coping with hundreds of thousands of pages — each a type of is a paper lower.
Handbook techniques create a compliance drag and a drag on revenue that folks don’t sometimes see — digital lifts each of these up.
Q: When producers face a shock audit or inspection, what benefits does a digitized program administration system present in comparison with conventional documentation strategies?
Dean Brown: It provides you real-time capacity to anticipate and reply these questions within the unannounced audit. Considered one of our prospects stated it greatest: “Your software program turned a fireplace drill into 5 clicks.” Steve Jobs used to say, “It simply works.”
Digital vegetation don’t put together for audits. They’re at all times prepared.
Whether or not it’s an unannounced audit, or you’ve gotten embedded FDA auditors, you’ve gotten a 24×7 audit room that’s prepared. These are organized in such a means that you could take a look at a BRC audit, an SQF audit, a FSMA audit or compliance program — they’re all interconnected, they usually’re all served off the identical base of knowledge. So that you don’t need to duplicate all the pieces you do for every sort of compliance.
And it’s not simply federal or state regulatory packages; there are additionally buyer regulatory packages. You need to adjust to some pretty refined buyer mandated necessities, and you are able to do that on the fly instantly, as these necessities change and replicate these wherever within the system.
Once more, we need to transfer folks from preparing for audits, to at all times being prepared for it.
Q: As regulatory necessities proceed to evolve, how does a digital platform assist producers keep forward of compliance adjustments fairly than always taking part in catch-up?
Dean Brown: As a result of they’re digital, the types replace immediately. The impression of remapping or reassessing for brand new laws is immediate — one change could be deployed in seconds and pushed throughout your complete group.
You may as well consider adjustments. For instance, SQF adjustments are arising within the close to future. Prospects can situation plan proper now. They’ll load the clauses up, they will take a look at the mapping to see which components of their program will probably be impacted, they usually can begin to make these adjustments now. Put them in a sandbox, and when they’re prepared they usually have somebody at every web site who is able to settle for these clauses, they only push the button and publish. They are often transferring to enforcement within the subsequent minute, not the subsequent quarter or the subsequent 12 months.
The impression can be constant. There’s no, “Did that facility get that finished proper?” As a result of the dashboards are stay, and, once more, immediate.
Laws transfer, and your types transfer with them in actual time.
Q: Many meals producers fear concerning the studying curve and implementation timeline when adopting new know-how. What does the everyday onboarding course of appear like with SafetyChain, and the way do you guarantee minimal disruption to ongoing operations?
Dean Brown: In the end, the job right here is to ship high quality merchandise to prospects. It’s not the administration concerned.
We discuss it as 90 days to worth, not 9 months — quick timed implementation, so you’ll be able to concentrate on the actual job of offering high quality merchandise to superb prospects.
For us, you sometimes see six weeks the place you concentrate on the preliminary implementation of core processes and types. Then plant-wide rollout sometimes is within the first 90 days, the place prospects are literally seeing these dashboards. They’re getting real-time data, they usually’re in a position to begin making real-time selections.
We do this first by offering a product that’s mobile-friendly. The UI and UX of the product has been inbuilt such a means that the impression on the frontline employees is minimal. For these core units of processes, it may possibly take 15 minutes to crosstrain a frontline worker. We additionally use the train-the-trainer mannequin, the place the QA leads within the services tackle the primary coaching tranche. Then from there on, they sometimes lead these coaching rollouts themselves.
So it’s obtained to be fast-start, manufacturing unit ground pleasant, and trigger mainly zero downtime within the plant operations.
We’ve got plenty of prospects who’ve seen a 90-day payback on their complete funding. Nearly each buyer sees payback inside at the least lower than a 12 months, as a result of we attempt to anticipate the change administration that has to occur.
Q: For producers involved about knowledge safety when transferring from paper to digital techniques, what safeguards does SafetyChain implement to guard delicate data whereas nonetheless enabling real-time visibility throughout groups?
Dean Brown: Digital techniques like SafetyChain provide far stronger locks than your submitting cupboards, and the lights are at all times on.
We take all of the steps you’ll count on. We’re totally SOC 2 compliant. We’re hosted in Azure with all the safety that brings. We’re GDPL aligned. We encrypt knowledge in transit and at relaxation.
It even perks down into the usage of the product with totally safe profiles. In these shock audits, the factor our prospects love is that they may give an iPad to an auditor. It has a safe profile on it with a safe logon, and the one factor the auditor is are the issues which are ascribed to that audit compliance. Each worker has an analogous profile that mandates what they will and may’t see, and all the pieces has a full audit path due to the sorts of compliance packages that we work on.
After which for ourselves — personal cloud tenancy, cross contamination of information, common third-party penetration checks, and 99.9% SLA. Security is completely key to what we do. We begin with it from the primary line of code we write, and we observe that every one the best way all the way down to the tip consumer. It’s essentially the most safe approach to management who, what, and the place you share your knowledge.
Q: For producers who’re able to digitize their FSQA packages, what particular benefits does SafetyChain’s answer provide?
Dean Brown: We consider we’re actually the one one who appears to be like at it holistically with one platform that aggregates high quality manufacturing and provider and is purpose-built for meals and beverage.
However SafetyChain’s greatest asset is SafetyChain’s folks. If you happen to take a look at the critiques, our prospects constantly say SafetyChain persons are best-in-class. Most of our folks come from trade. They’ve labored in these jobs. They perceive.
It’s a fancy trade, and we meet prospects the place they’re at. Our types of workflow are infinitely configurable to fulfill FSMA, GFSI, USDA, and buyer regulatory packages. You’ll be able to adapt SafetyChain to your wants and necessities. If in case you have 250 services, small, medium, or massive — all of them have other ways to method operations. SafetyChain accommodates for that complexity and that configuration distinction in ways in which I feel nobody else does.
We additionally accommodate for the nuances of {the marketplace}, like offline entry. A lot of our prospects have lifeless spots of their services. They’ve previous warehouses and services that don’t have fully-connected, excellent Wi-Fi. Our system is resilient to accommodate for that as a result of we need to meet our prospects the place they’re at.
The identical goes for our pricing fashions. We’ve got a bonus pricing mannequin that doesn’t nickel and dime prospects as they develop or if seasonally they should add a brand new shift. We need to allow your small business, not constantly have conversations with you about pricing.
However in the end, it’s about belief. All people’s obtained proof factors on their web site. We’ve had 2,500 services utilizing this product for over a decade — everybody from early stage roasters to $60 billion manufacturers. We’ve been in a position to reveal belief again and again by assembly them the place they’re at.
SafetyChain provides the shortest path from the clipboard to a aggressive benefit.
Q: Do you’ve gotten any closing ideas for our viewers?
Dean Brown: I actually take pleasure in this market. The power to generate ROI for patrons is super in low-margin companies.
Paper tells you what went unsuitable yesterday. It’s gradual, it’s reactive, it’s painful.
Programs like SafetyChain let you know what to repair proper now, and, much more importantly, what to stop and optimize tomorrow.
