Five tools to help boost supply chain resilience for food & beverage organisations

Over the past few years, Australia has faced harsher fire seasons, unprecedented flooding and longer droughts. In 2024, major floods in Western Australia forced freight trucks to take detours of over 2000 kilometres, delaying the delivery of basic supplies to remote communities. Earlier this year, Ex-Cyclone Alfred caused the temporary shutdown of distribution centres in Brisbane, leading to produce spoilage and empty supermarket shelves. Add rising geopolitical instability, persistent labour shortages and increasing cyber threats into the mix, and the pressure on food and beverage organisations only continues to intensify. These disruptions can slow or freeze operations, affecting throughput, quality, shelf life, revenue and profitability.

In the face of these challenges, visibility has never been more crucial.

Spoilage and demand shifts can make or break margins, so knowing what’s happening and where is critical. Yet, according to our latest research, 61% of food and beverage organisations have limited visibility over parts of their supply chain, and only 7% of global supply chain leaders have achieved full multi-tier transparency, according to the World Economic Forum.

When visibility falls short, risk rises

Despite growing awareness of supply chain fragility, it is clear that many food and beverage organisations operate with blind spots. Visibility might extend to immediate suppliers or logistics partners, but further up or downstream data often becomes patchy or out of date, making it hard to spot bottlenecks, quality issues or emerging risks. This leads to missed production targets, wasted stock and downstream delays that damage both margins and customer trust.

Furthermore, visibility challenges do not only exist for entities and processes that are outside an organisation. They can also be present between different departments within the same company. Interviewees in a recent study, commissioned by Forrester Consulting on behalf of Infor, describe how siloed operations and manual processes can drain warehouse and logistics productivity.

Food and beverage organisations need to build resilience, and fast

To do so, visibility needs to be granular, real time and actionable. That means connecting siloed systems and integrating partner data while investing in smarter technology that goes deeper than surface insights, to help teams respond with speed and confidence.

Agility starts with automation

Responding to sudden disruption — be it extreme weather, supply shocks or shifting regulations — requires greater visibility alongside increased agility. That’s why the most productive food and beverage organisations are leaning on technology, specifically intelligent automation, to make faster, more informed decisions while easing pressure on overstretched teams.

Here’s five tools helping them do it:

1. Generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) generates scenario-based simulations to help planners respond to forecast fluctuations with speed and precision.
2. Augmented intelligence delivers real-time recommendations based on live operational data, guiding better decisions before disruption hits.
3. Integrated shelf-life optimisation manages stock levels by product or location, helping prevent waste by aligning production and distribution with expiry thresholds.
4. Advanced visualisation tools support bi-directional track and trace, product recalls and general supply chain management.
5. Robotic process automation (RPA) automates time-consuming admin tasks such as invoice matching and order entry, freeing teams to focus on higher-value work.

Together, these tools streamline operations and reduce manual error while enabling a more proactive response, keeping organisations one step ahead, even when the unexpected hits.

Smarter decisions start with stronger data foundations

To make fast, confident decisions, food and beverage organisations need a single source of truth and integrated analytics. When systems are unified, insights are no longer buried in spreadsheets or siloed across departments. Instead, teams can access real-time operational data that helps them anticipate issues, identify inefficiencies and spot trends, so they can act with precision. With the right tools, leaner teams can do more — accelerating output and reducing manual errors, all while improving responsiveness. In an unpredictable world, this kind of data-driven clarity is how the most productive food and beverage organisations stand out.

This clarity is especially important in an industry under increasing pressure from both rising consumer expectations and a shrinking talent pool. As ESG regulations, traceability standards and food safety mandates become more demanding, centralised data ensures organisations can respond quickly and demonstrate compliance without adding to the administrative burden.

Ongoing disruption isn’t going anywhere, but with the right technology, food and beverage organisations don’t have to stay on the back foot. From automation to agility, the right approach to digital transformation is helping food and beverage organisations go from increasing complexity to greater clarity, building resilience while driving real, measurable results.

Now is the time to act.

*Terry Smagh is Senior Vice President & General Manager, Asia Pacific and Japan at Infor. In his role, Terry is passionate about driving SaaS adoption and growth across the fastest-growing region for Infor, and helping customers derive quick value from their business transformation and technology investments. He is a seasoned sales executive and revenue growth leader with more than 20 years of Asia Pacific experience across enterprise software sales in the digital transformation space, spanning industries such as retail, finance and insurance.

Top image credit: iStock.com/DLMcK