Stevens Traceability Logo

3 Reasons Your Bakery Needs Digital Transformation

Last Updated: February 7th, 20243 min read
Share this:

Digital transformation has become a key consideration for businesses when reviewing their existing operations and identifying opportunities moving forward. For businesses in the food and beverage industry, like a bakery, digital transformation can help with recent challenges and future proof the business for challenges yet to come.

In an ever-changing world, with advancing technologies becoming common place in the manufacturing world, there is a clear need for bakeries to adopt this technology to maximise their potential.

1. Gaining a Competitive Edge

Implementing digital tools within your bakery can make your business more efficient across production and administration. These kinds of improvements in your business can help give your business an advantage over competitors. Indeed, a recent report from the International Data Corporation explained that…

“[Food and beverage companies] that are more advanced in their digital transformation journey generally outperform those that are less progressed. In other words, there is a clear advantage to the prudent adoption of technologies…”

Source: Global Food and Beverage Industry Trends and
Strategic Insights, 2021. IDC

The report found clear correlations between digitisation and business performance, citing efforts that “overwhelmingly led to KPI improvements across the business” including revenue and profit. There are several benefits to digital transformation in the workplace that lead to these improvements in business performance, including…

  • Increased efficiency across the business
  • Improved data insights
  • Better operator experience
  • Lower risk of human error

Get Started With Digital Transformation

Are you looking to improve the quality of your products and KPI performance, while saving money and increasing profits? Learn more about the how bakery management software and recipe formulation systems can kick start your bakery’s digital transformation journey.

2. navigating supply chain issues

Supply chains are often at risk to a multitude of external factors than can cause delays and shortages. Over the last couple of years alone, food manufacturers and bakeries have had to navigate issues such as staff shortages through the Covid pandemic, and grain shortages caused by the war in Ukraine to name just two.

Reasons for supply chain uncertainty include:

  • Geopolitics
  • Legislation
  • Extreme Weather
  • Regional Lockdowns

Digital transformation can help businesses contend with these issues with minimal impact thanks to better flexibility, support, and improved data insights. An improved, digital user experience can reduce operator workload, helping businesses cope with staff shortages. Additionally, electronic systems can provide better support to your production line. A digital traceability system for example, can help optimise and improve your response to product recalls in the case of certain issues with the supply chain.

3. Meet changing customer expectations

In recent years, food manufacturers and bakeries have encountered changes like growing trends of vegan and free-from dietary needs, as well as a more sustainability focussed market. These kinds of changes in consumer habits bring an expectation on businesses to adapt throughout their production and administrative processes.

Having a digital infrastructure in place will put your business in the best position to meet these expectations as and when they appear, providing greater clarity and flexibility in adapting your existing processes as well as implementing new processes if necessary.

For example, if a bakery is looking to add vegan products to their portfolio, an electronic traceability system or recipe management system can help them track and verify the ingredients used in producing such products to satisfy regulatory bodies and prove their product’s vegan status to customers.

Other cases might include digital technology helping you to:

  • Set factory wide allergen controls to limit the risk of contamination and make product labelling easy.
  • Ensuring sensitive recipes like free-from foods are handled accordingly with relevant evidencing available in just seconds.
  • Eliminating paper from your operations to improve your carbon footprint and help your business reach net-zero targets.

Try our FREE Traceability System Assessment Tool to find out how a digital system can improve your processes, plus get a FREE PDF Report.

2024-02-07T10:30:36+00:00