How food and beverage organisations can boost supply chain resilience with greater visibility

Extreme weather events across Europe have surged by 48% in just two years, disrupting nearly 17,000 food supply chains during the 2023/24 season alone. Add rising geopolitical instability, persistent labour shortages, and increasing cyber threats into the mix, and the pressure on food and beverage organizations 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might extend to immediate suppliers or logistics partners, but further up or downstream data often becomes patchy or out of date, making it hard to spot bottlenecks, quality issues, or emerging risks.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™, The Total Economic Impact™ (TEI) of Infor Industry CloudSuite, 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 how they’re doing it:

• Generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) generates scenario-based simulations to help planners respond to forecast fluctuations with speed and precision.
• Augmented intelligence delivers real-time recommendations based on live operational data, guiding better decisions before disruption hits.
• Integrated shelf-life optimisation to manage stock levels by product or location, helping prevent waste by aligning production and distribution with expiry thresholds.
• Advanced visualisation tools support bi-directional track and trace, product recalls, and general supply chain management.
• 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. The TEI study, referenced earlier, describes productivity gains up to 70% for a composite organisation representative of interviewed Infor customers.

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 environmental, social, and governance (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.

Discover how possible happens

Ongoing disruption isn’t going anywhere, but with the right technology, food and beverage organisations don’t have to stay on the back foot. We commissioned a major piece of global industry research and uncovered four key Vectors to Value that the most productive food and beverage organisations share. These vectors serve as a blueprint for success, offering exclusive insight into how strategic technology investment can unlock a productivity advantage and pave the way to value creation.

From automation to agility, these strategies are helping food and beverage organizations go from increasing complexity to greater clarity, building resilience while driving real, measurable results.

Now is the time to act.

Download the report to see how your food and beverage organisation compares, and how you can swap reactivity for proactivity.