We’re proud to announce the latest software release of FoodBusiness ERP, powered by Sage X3, with some exciting new customer-driven features and functionality purpose-built for Food and Beverage manufacturers. We continue to introduce unique, value-added capabilities that address the ‘last mile’ of manufacturing ERP, delivering industry-specific functionality above and beyond what is found in ‘out-of-the-box’ ERP software solutions. Our goal is to ensure our Food and Beverage clients achieve optimal value and performance from their investment in Sage X3. Read on to see what’s new and why it matters to organizations like yours.
Key Features in this Release:
- Dynamic Pricing by Weight
- Pallet-Based Purchasing
- GS1 Label Support
- Product Attributes
- ACH and EFT Payments
Weight, what’s the big deal?
Many manufacturers and distributors encourage their customers to buy in bulk. Most ERP systems support this by providing quantity-based pricing and discounts. FoodBusiness ERP is no different and has some of the most robust pricing capabilities in the ERP marketspace.
However, there are organizations that encourage bulk buying by offering discounts based on the total weight, not traditional price breaks based on quantity or order total.
In FoodBusiness ERP 2024 R2, we have leveraged the FoodBusiness ERP pricing setup that clients are already familiar with and added a little “special sauce” to enable dynamic pricing by weight. No manual intervention required. This feature supports bulk buys, which in turn increases efficiency and revenue while reducing errors and order costs.
Something new to please your ‘pallet’
FoodBusiness ERP provides excellent planning tools to assist materials managers and buyers. These tools can be used to maximize discounts and realize freight savings. The planning functions support this decision making via a few different options:
- Tracking free freight threshold and order totals
- Using containers to match desired buys in weight or volume
- Comparing “selected” weight and volume to container maximum
- Adding unplanned purchases from a supplier to hit threshold or minimize freight
Those tools are powerful and provide nice options for a materials manager or buyer. However, we found in Food and Beverage and some other industries, a key option was missing. Many consider the pallet as “king” for managing operations efficiently. They purchase in full or multi-pallet quantities to achieve price breaks or to fully utilize the transport capacity. Prior to the R2 release, this required a combination of math, user knowledge, and the use of a calculator or spreadsheet. FoodBusiness ERP 2024 R2 now includes pallets in the built-in planning functions. Key aspects of pallet planning are as follows:
- Default pallet packing unit and quantity on the product
- Defining a maximum pallet quantity on the logistics container
- Calculating pallet quantity in planning/execution tools
- Compare container capacity versus calculated pallets (when applicable)
Pallet planning is a tool our customers can leverage to achieve greater operational efficiency and cost savings.
GS1 label profiles – label this a win for efficient shipping
GS1 label support and processing was introduced earlier this year in the 2024 R1 release. In the R2 release we have picked up where we left off, taking the solution to the next level. One of the challenges in food and beverage is managing labels. The content can vary between products and where in the manufacturing process it is being printed (raw material, semi-finish, finished good, etc.). We are introducing GS1 label profiles to address this complexity and provide an option that minimizes label customization. This Pallet Profile feature provides configuration options to do the following:
- Select the application IDs to be included in the GS1 barcode
- Choose the data source
- Select optional date fields to include
- Include site image for label graphics
R1 focused on reading GS1 barcodes and processing efficiently using the data provided. R2 provides tools to simplify the setup and printing of GS1 compliant labels. This useful capability has been extended to the shipping dock by providing the option to print a GS1 pallet label with SSCC identification for inclusion on deliveries.
Want to define what makes your product special? The sky’s the limit.
Customers and prospects often have the business requirement to define and track attributes about their products. The fields needed to satisfy this requirement often go far beyond what is available in a normal ‘off-the-shelf’ ERP product. Attributes vary by industry, company, and even within product families or groups. Many ERP providers address this requirement by providing a limited number of “user defined” fields. With the release of FoodBusiness ERP 2024 R2, this capability is provided by our new Product Attribute feature.
Before getting into details, let’s take a moment to define product attributes and some of their common uses. Product attributes refer to the characteristics used to define a service or a product. For example, they can be used to define an important product feature that influences customer buying behavior such as “gluten-free” of “low fat” or any relevant information about the product that a client might want to be printed on a label. This is just one of many practical uses for this capability.
ERP systems use product IDs or SKUs (stock-keeping units) as the backbone for their production and fulfillment operations. Customers typically don’t know product IDs or SKUs, using attributes instead to find the products or services they want to buy. For food and beverage, for example, attributes like gluten-free, kosher, sugar-free, or peanut-free may be a key factor in a buying decision. Product attributes provide the means for associating products and services with key identifiers that define their use. The list of attributes is virtually endless, but below are some common examples:
- Quality
- Marketing Claims
- Innovative aspects
- Certifications
- Color
- Size
- Smell
- Taste
- Feel
- Packaging
FoodBusiness ERP 2024 R2 provides a configuration-based, 100% code-free solution that makes it easy for business users to define the attributes they need. Here are some highlights of the new feature:
- Almost limitless – Define up to 30K+ product attributes
- Tailored – Profiles to group relevant attributes for a product
- Flexible – Available on the category, product, and product-site
- Control – Define the data type (alpha, numeric, date, yes/no, selection list, etc.)
- See it your way – Define the order of the groups and attributes within a profile
While this new feature is being rolled out first in FoodBusiness ERP 2024 R2, it is broadly applicable to Sage X3 customers across a range of industries, including discrete and process manufacturing.
ACH and EFT: you spoke, we listened
With recent changes to the security requirements for ACH with NACHA, a client processing two million ACH transactions a year must comply as of 2023. Those with a volume below the threshold have no additional security requirements.
At a high level, NACHA’s additional security measures are specific to bank information “at rest.” This refers to data in storage and not “in use” or “active.” For example, a user editing a screen or the information in a file that is being transmitted are examples of the data that is “active.” During that period, it is not subject to the new security requirements. NACHA does not provide outlines or guidance on how companies should address this in terms of approaches or technologies.
NexTec has proactively changed our ACH and EFT solutions to store the banking data in an obfuscated state (not readable to the human eye). While not the same as encryption, it can be combined with existing FoodBusiness ERP and system security options to secure the data “at rest” and control access from within the application. This obfuscation is standard behavior starting with the R2 release. To facilitate the implementation of ACH and EFT, we have provided import templates to facilitate the loading of the bank information for a business partner or supplier.
Ready to Learn More?
Contact our food and beverage manufacturing experts with any questions or to schedule a personalized demonstration of the new functionality available in the latest release of Food Business ERP, powered by Sage X3. We’d love to chat!