Foods Connected: Transforming the Food Supply Chain with the Utmost Reliability
- Category: Cover Story
Nothing in our world is permanent, as is well-known, and the same holds true for our always shifting needs and demands. Food is one need that never changes. Yes, food always comes up in conversation because you are what you eat!
There is no denying the significance of food, particularly the Food Supply Chain sector. The demand for reputable food supply chain companies that can meet obstacles and consistently produce outstanding results is continually on the rise!
Through this search, we discovered Foods Connected. Foods Connected is a well-known brand in the food supply chain sector, providing cutting-edge and effective solutions. In charge of the business is Roger McCracken.
Today, Roger McCracken, co-founder and managing director of Foods Connected Ltd., joins us for an enlightening discussion. Let’s learn more about the business, Roger’s motivation for founding Foods Connected, and other things.
Tell us a little bit about the business and what made you decide to establish it.
I’m from Northern Ireland, and Paul Armstrong, Gary Tyre, and I co-founded Foods Connected in response to the urgent need to digitise routine supply chain operations in the food industry in order to raise quality, lower risk, and lower costs for food companies.
I was well positioned to develop the technology solutions necessary to address critical concerns because I have a background in livestock and arable farming from my family and have worked in the meat processing industry for a long time.
I saw a chance to develop a cutting-edge software solution that enables food businesses to drastically reduce their use of paper and excel spreadsheets by logging all of their supply chain approval, quality assurance, trading, and planning negotiations on a single, simple-to-use cloud software platform, drastically cutting costs and time.
Key stakeholders in the food sector throughout the world use the Foods Connected cloud-based software platform, which optimises transparency and control over the whole supply chain for food merchants, food manufacturers, and foodservice providers. The platform has changed how the food industry functions and goes about its everyday business in order to make food production ethical, safe, and simple.
What goods or services does the business prioritise? How are they different from the competitors?
Through our one-stop-shop software solution, which provides improved transparency over each component of supply chain management for our customers in the most straightforward manner possible, Foods Connected innovates and transforms the food supply chain operations. Based on the needs of our customers and the in-depth expertise of our team of industry specialists, all of our supply chain functionality is customised for use in real-world applications.
Foods Connected is an end-to-end supply chain management platform created exclusively for the food sector. It focuses on supplier compliance, food safety and quality, CSR, procurement and supply chain, specifications and new product development, traceability, reporting, and analytics.
Foods Connected was entirely developed by professionals in the food industry, many of whom had prior experience working on factory floors. As a result, they have first-hand knowledge of the problems that food businesses deal with on a daily basis and a thorough understanding of how to implement customer projects to maximise benefits and minimise risk.
We use innovation, research, and development to transform procedures and raise the sustainability of the food industry. Businesses operating in this sector may remain ahead of the outside influences that affect and influence their everyday operations by combining industry knowledge with Foods Connected’s reporting and analytics capabilities.
The only digital supply chain solution on the market that provides tracking, control, and reporting across all significant parts of the food supply chain inside a single pane of glass view is the Foods Connected platform.
Please tell us a little bit about the Foods Connected team.
Foods Connected was created as a result of our passion for finding solutions to issues and taking advantage of opportunities in the food industry. Our enthusiastic, committed, and highly motivated team works together with our clients to comprehend the shifting challenges and opportunities the food business faces. Based on this understanding, they create original concepts and straightforward fixes that provide genuine value to the sector.
The Foods Connected company has grown steadily over the past ten years from a team of two to over 80 employees spread around the UK and Australia, with plans to expand to other locations, while now serving clients in Europe, APAC, and North America!
Tell us about your professional background, please.
Foods Connected was created with the input of industry professionals. I have experience working locally in the food business and a background in farming, so I naturally grasped the issues the sector faced and had a strong understanding of the technological solutions that would be needed to address them.
While I was employed by a well-known meat company in the UK, I became aware of a market opportunity to develop an inventive software solution that would address the actual needs of companies operating in the food industry, despite the fact that food businesses already had good digital systems in place to manage production, finance, and inventory management processes.
I was aware that digitising the fundamental procedures will change the way the food business handles supplier management, procurement, food safety, and technical requirements. Previously, these activities were carried out using a variety of administratively demanding manual techniques, such as Excel spreadsheets, pen and paper, emails, and phone conversations. This process was time-consuming and frequently resulted in duplication of effort.
Foods Connected was created as a result to enhance quality, reduce risk, and lower costs for food industries.
What major accomplishments have you made in your business life?
The level and scale at which we are currently operating is a significant accomplishment of our journey. Foods Connected has upgraded our array of solutions to include traceability, sustainability, and recipe management tools as part of our ongoing innovation to address the demands of the industry.
We currently operate internationally, starting in the UK and spanning all of Europe and Australia. We have established ourselves as major players in the area for supply chain software specifically designed for the food sector. Coming from small villages in the north of Ireland, we are extremely pleased of having grown from a team of two to one with over 80 staff members—and we’re still expanding quickly!
We are quite proud of what we have accomplished when we consider how far we have come and all the people who have supported us along the road to get us to where we are. And that’s just the beginning!
Do you have any memorable client experiences you could share?
At Foods Connected, we take pride in the continually favourable comments we get from our clients. Our key is going above and beyond to make sure clients can fully benefit from our solutions, offering excellent client support, creating tools to suit their requirements, and collaborating with them to enhance their experience.
Below, you can hear firsthand from some of our clients on how they’ve integrated Foods Connected into their workflows and how the software has improved the efficiency of their business operations.
“Foods Connected has offered a structure for gathering agreed-upon sales and purchasing outcomes in a single, central location. This makes it simple to compare all of the greatest price possibilities for better business selections.” – Woolworths
“We required a system to manage our extensive global supply chain and to provide transparency across every level of our complex network. We now have visibility into our operations thanks to the integrated solutions that Foods Connected has given us. This allows us to better monitor supplier compliance and reduce any risks.”- Marley Spoon
“Using Foods Connected has enabled us to drive standard processes across our business, helping to capture data in a consistent way so the analytics allows us to easily see comparable performance on any level,” the company claims.”- Ornua Foods
Which quotation is your favourite?
“Imagination is the act of creating new things. Doing new things is what innovation is.” – Theodore Levitt
