Scaling Up Your Food Business: Getting Started on Digital Traceability

- Thank you for joining us for this next webinar in our "Scaling Up your Food Business" series.

Today's topic is "Getting Started on Digital Traceability." Some quick webinar tips.

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Your hosts for today's webinar are Martin Bucknavage, Senior Food Safety Extension Associate, Rick Crawl, Food Safety and Quality Extension Educator, and I'm Sarah Cornelisse, Senior Extension Associate, all with PennState Extension.

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And then as a reminder, next month our webinar topic will be "How can Ben Franklin Technology Partners Help You?" That webinar will be on Friday, April 21st, again at 1:00 PM, and Julie Bratton from Ben Franklin Technology Partners will introduce the services and support that Ben Franklin provides to early stage small manufacturers in Pennsylvania.

So we encourage you to look for the registration site on the PennState Extension website and register for that.

With that, I will turn it over to our speakers today who are joining us from Caddy.

We have Jason Ellis and Eric Do Couto, and Jason, the floor is all yours.

- Perfect. Thank you so much, Sarah.

I'll go ahead and I'll share my screen here.

All right, well, thank you, again, everyone, for joining this afternoon, I really appreciate it.

Happy Friday. Happy St. Patrick's Day.

Today, we're gonna be chatting about "Scaling Up Your Food Business," obviously, and "Getting Started with Digital Traceability." So we'll go through a quick agenda and then we'll dive right in.

So the overview today, we're gonna start with introductions, who am I, and then we'll dive into the importance of food traceability and safety.

We'll take a look at what the traditional way or the traditional method of food safety and traceability looks like, and then we'll touch on some cloud-based solutions.

So we'll look at some classic ERP systems, some other cloud-based solutions.

We'll take a quick moment to discuss how implementation and training is really the key to any of those systems, and then we'll see a short demonstration of one of these cloud-based systems and take a look at exactly how that could help a business.

And then we'll leave some time, like Sarah mentioned, at the end for Q&A.

So first, who am I?

I'm Jason Ellis, so I'm a Senior Account Manager at Caddy.

So that's one of these cloud-based solutions that we'll be talking about today, I work for one of 'em.

And I worked with many food operators in the startup or scaling environments, plenty of experience across different food industries.

I work with a lot of folks like yourselves watching to help transition methods from paper solutions up to digital solutions, especially when it comes to food safety and traceability.

And with that, we do have some time today for some audience participation.

So there'll be a few chances to get involved.

Please have your cell phone ready to scan some QR codes and give your input.

You'll have plenty of notice when that time's coming.

And like Sarah mentioned before, you can also share any questions in the chats or the QA section of the Zoom webinar or the chat section, whatever works best for you, and we'll get to as many as we can at the end of the presentation.

And with that being said, we'll dive right in to the importance of food safety.

So the importance of food safety, it's really the key here to our presentation.

I've got a few stats here that can really bring some of the reality of those costs associated with recalls and how commonly they can occur.

With almost 500 recalls reported by the FDA each year and close to 200 by the CFIA in Canada and each one of these costing between one and 10 million, effective recalls and a proper traceability solution are really essential to protecting your business.

There's more than just financial damage here, but also loss of customer trust as well as the reputation of your brand.

So as we continue, we'll touch on the different methods of how food safety and traceability solutions can really impact your readiness to deal with any of these recalls, especially as you continue to grow and scale your business.

So first, we'll start with our first chance to participate.

Please take a moment to scan this QR code here, let us know what comes to mind when you think of traditional food safety and traceability.

We can see an office here that maybe is ringing some bells for you, but when you think of that traditional method of what food safety typically looks like, go ahead, scan that QR code, you'll see a screen on Menti where you'll be able to enter some of those options.

In just a moment here, Eric's gonna pull up a screen, we'll take a look at some of the common responses and see what people are saying.

We'll leave that QR code up for just a second there though.

I'll stop sharing here for a second.

Eric, you can go ahead and share.

- Sure, so let's see some of the answers that we got here.

I see slow, difficult, busy, paper-based, paperwork, clutter, cluttered, drudgery, that's a fancy one. (laughs)

Overwhelming, find, yeah, I think find is a good one.

Office manager's worry, sure.

Martin's office, okay, I guess someone's taking a dig at poor Martin here.

Disorganization, although admittedly this looks relatively tidy, there's not too many loose sheets obviously defined any individual document here probably would not be particularly pleasant or easy, especially when time is of the essence.

So a lot of good answers so far.

10 respondents, decent respondent percentage, but it seems like the common theme here is slow, difficult, anxiety, paper-based, paper focused, et cetera, and I guess this is what Martin's office looks like.

- Poor Martin.

(presenters laughing)

You'd see Martin coming on to defend himself here.

- Jason, feel free to take back control and continue.

- Thanks so much, Eric, and thank you everyone for participating there.

I'm glad to hear some of those responses.

The one I thought resonated most with me was that library system, I saw someone.

But, yeah, you need the Dewey Decimal system to dig through sometimes in the traditional way.

So now, actually, we'll talk a little bit more about what that traditional way typically looks like and we'll talk about some of the pros and cons 'cause obviously some cons were just mentioned there.

But there are definitely some pros to doing it that way, and that's why it's the typical way there, and then we'll kind of see what some of the other options are here.

So the overview of that traditional method, what does that look like today in regards to traceability?

Like a lot of people were mentioning, we see those shipping, receiving, processing, really any forms that are typically being handled in day-to-day operations.

Those are paper forms that are being filled out via pen.

There's a set of forms that need to be printed by an administrator each morning and then they're filled out during the day.

And then at the end of that shift or the day these are either filed away into a filing cabinet somewhere in Martin's office for physical storage or those are gonna be manually entered into another system, whether that's a scanner or with some manual data entry into something like a Google Drive or a Dropbox to have storage of any of these forms backed up in the cloud.

So we'd call that a bit of a hybrid solution if you have that option backed up somewhere in the cloud.

But we typically see that library system or these filing cabinets for physical storage.

There are some other spreadsheet systems that kind of work along with the traditional way, somewhat of a digital step where at the end of that day or shift, all of those results are entered from those paper forms into a solution like an Excel or a Google Sheets.

And that can again be stored in the cloud, as that's somewhat of a digital step, so it's accessible, or some companies choose to print these spreadsheets and then continue to store that physically as well.

So we kind of see a lot of that physical space being taken up and a lot of that data entry there on the traditional way.

Now to touch on some of those pros and cons, obviously like I mentioned before, with this being the traditional method and this being the only method and the most adopted method for a long period of time, there's obviously several pros to this solution.

First off, it doesn't really require anything new to learn or master, it's the familiar option of pen and paper, easy enough to figure out and modify without really having to have any technical knowledge.

These paper forms can be amended on the fly, whether that's through annotations or notes, and the barrier to entry for a floor operator using those forms day to day is very low.

And it's typically similar company to company, so new hires can pick those up pretty quickly.

It's also relatively inexpensive, the cost of paper or a filing cabinet or even something like Excel or a Google Drive, it's really not an exorbitant cost.

In those hybrid solutions, maybe that storage can start to add up cost-wise.

But again, compared to a full-fledge solution like we'll talk about in a little bit prices are very low to have this solution, and, of course, it's already the status quo.

It works today, it doesn't require facing any anxiety involved with change or having to make any big decisions company wide, no one needs to be retrained on a new system and it can just continue to work as it already does.

But, of course, with those pros along come some cons.

So the big ones being the proneness of human errors, lack of transparency day-to-day, minute to minute, and some large inefficiencies.

So human errors always gonna impact any process, but compared to some steps that can be taken with digital solutions, having pen and paper allows for things like illegible writing, destroyed forms, or even just forms that never make their way into the office and just get lost in the meantime.

And that transparency really lacks on the real-time data.

So compared to a cloud-based solution where everything can be happening in real-time, you can't know exactly what's happening on a floor unless you're there or until you receive those forms at the end of the day or the end of a shift.

So there's definitely lagging, there's a lagging indicator for any information to be shared from that floor up to a back office scenario.

And when looking at efficiency having someone either need to re-enter results into another system, sort it into a digital drive, or file it into a file cabinet in another part of the facility, there's a lot of labor hours involved, a lot more especially than would be needed in a digital solution.

And these limitations can impact your business in ways outside of just a recall where it's time to find those papers, whether it's that loss productivity, increased labor costs, or some other fashions.

And the big attention areas here that we'll chat about are mock recalls, or heaven forbid a real recalls along with some audits.

So in a mock recall scenario perhaps you're attempting to enter a new retailer, you may need to find all the documents in a specific lot in a two to three hour window.

And that can be pretty difficult with paper files strewn across the facility or among different drives on computers, and that can really drive that time up to get all of that paperwork in order.

Of course, that same applies to real recalls where time is really of the essence and you wanna lessen that impact as much as possible.

And on the audit side, maybe you need to see the training records for each employee that was working on a specific lot or on a specific date.

Again, you might have those documents already on hand somewhere in the facility, but it's the time that's involved there that's really the main concern, especially if the current solution relies on a certain staff member.

So maybe all of the files are in Martin's office and Martin knows exactly where everything is, but if Martin's out the day of the audit, you're stuck a little bit.

So you run that risk of slowing the process even further if you're dependent on that manual solution.

And as we move on here to kind of look at some of those cloud-based options, we can see how this issues really combated with these solutions and especially in bringing the time down here in either a mock recall or an audit scenario.

So first we'll look at some classic ERP systems, ERP or Enterprise Resource Planning systems.

You can see a few logos here on screen that might look a little familiar to you.

Oracle, SAP, Microsoft, these huge, huge companies that we've all heard of.

And you can see on the left, an ERP can really touch many aspects of a business, so it's not just gonna be specific to food safety.

And the overview looking at ERPs as a whole, they're very well known, robust systems with very, very powerful features.

These can be cloud-based or they could have servers on premise at a facility.

Typically, we're seeing, as the world moves forward with technology, these are becoming more and more cloud-based solutions rather than having to have servers on the facility.

And typically with some off-the-shelf features, they might not fit every company's process exactly.

So there's gonna be a lot of customization that likely needs to happen.

This can come with associated costs to access certain features or integrations.

And this is really, it varies dependent, or sorry, it is very dependent on a business to business case.

Those customizations with ERPs likely can match all of your current processes, but it's how much customization needs to be done to get there.

And these solutions, as they're provided by larger enterprise companies, they're typically most prevalent in the larger enterprise style companies as well.

Companies that can have folks that work as in-house specialists to implement that and as well as a rather large working budget for that solution.

So the option to have many aspects of the business working under one system, that's typically a goal for these larger enterprises, which is why they're looking at an ERP solution.

Now looking at the pros with the ERP, kind of as we mentioned before, the big one is their a very powerful tool.

They can be customized company to company to really fit most needs.

They can solve very complex problems, whether that's interdepartmental or just through complex workflows that are already existing in facilities.

And due to that large feature scope of most of these ERPs, the tools can be utilized across several different departments.

So sometimes you're able to consolidate several tools into one place, which would reduce some redundancies and create some unity across the board or across the company.

And then, they can be a great fit for some businesses right out of the box, depending on the complexity or the needs of each individual business and how many of those features and functions you need to consolidate or integrate.

If some folks are just looking for a standard solution, some of those ERPs can offer those features without really requiring too many of that integration because of that wide scope.

But on the cons side here, it starts with the price.

These are typically very expensive with large implementation processes significant amount of time to implement.

Sometimes you'd need an external consultant to step in and help with this process, which both drives up monetary costs and time invested by the company.

And this may require ongoing expertise, whether that's in-house having a specialist or an external consultant to make sure that everything is being utilized appropriately.

Due to the scope of the project, you might need that expertise or consultation every time a new feature or a function is added or anytime the business wants to grow or change at all.

Because of this, it's typically suited to those larger companies like we mentioned, that's able to give that investment of both time and money.

So some smaller companies are kind of left out in the middle because they may only be using a small set of those features, which is leaving a lot of money already spent on the table or a lot of time sunk into a system that they might not properly be utilizing, which can then create friction with some of the teams.

That brings us to our third solution here.

Our final solution we'll touch on, these are some of those more niche cloud-based systems, so MRPs, QMS, DMS, I know I'm saying a lot of acronyms here that we'll dive into and some food safety tools, so a few more logos.

And with these being smaller companies, they might not all be household names like a Microsoft or an SAP.

And the overview of some of these solutions, they're a wide variety of tools that may not cover every inch of a business like an ERP does, but instead they focus on a key need of that particular product.

So a QMS or a Quality Management Software might just focus on the quality side, whereas a DMS or a Document Management Solution can excel in the document management but not even address quality at all.

So they have those smaller more niche focuses rather than an overarching ERP.

But because of this variety they can range in price.

They're typically a lot cheaper than those traditional ERPs because they're solving that certain problem rather than an ERP that's solving all of the problems and is all encompassing.

So you're really just paying for the solution you're looking for, and typically these solutions are cloud-based with no servers required on site at your facility and any updates can be pushed live immediately.

So if a new feature is launched or a bug is fixed, it typically does not require as much customization as an ERP.

You could think of it more like an update on any app on your phone rather than needing to fully adjust or implement a new system.

Now the pros of this solution the first pro is that they're very focused tools that solve very specific problems very well.

They're not overly complex for administration or for users, so you can really maximize your investment.

They're able to dive deeper into specific problems that are the focus, rather than doing a lot of things somewhat well, they do a set amount of things very well or expertly.

And like I mentioned before, they're typically less expensive than ERPs, but they still allow for a digital aspect as compared to that cheapest option, which is pen and paper.

So for smaller companies that are still growing, it allows for steps towards digitization without really having to break the bank.

And typically they have an improved customer success and implementation process due to that nature of working with smaller businesses than an ERP.

This also allows for some easier customization when needed and really without the need of an external consultant, everything can be just done with folks you already have.

But looking at the cons these tools might not be as powerful as an ERP in a feature set point of view.

With that focus on certain key needs, it can't address as many departments as an ERP.

So it typically cannot be your full fledged solution to include accounting and everything on that side.

But similar to an ERP, it also requires proper training and implementation compared to a pen and paper solution that is rather easy to implement and train folks on.

There's a lot more of a learning curve for everyone involved when you're using a digital solution rather than just continuing with that traditional method, pen and paper.

And a last con, there's a wide variety of tools available, so more research needs to be done upfront for each company to make sure that the solution you're purchasing is really solving that specific problem you're looking to solve, and it's really the tool that you need to choose rather than this might be it, and it solves all my problems.

There's a little more research that needs to be done upfront.

And as I mentioned implementation there, implementation and training is really the key for all cloud-based solutions.

So whether that's an ERP that we spoke about or one of those more niche cloud-based solutions like a food safety and traceability solution, the implementation and training process is your key to success.

'Cause pen and paper solutions typically work best for very small businesses, but as growth happens, the amount of work required to keep up with that solution, growing with you, that increases exponentially.

And as we've seen those audits and recall practices, they really require quick action to be taken, and the cost associated with the later can be very high if they're not managed appropriately as you continue to grow.

So especially for those smaller businesses that continue to grow and scale, for any solution that you look to choose, you need to make sure that that solution can grow and scale with you.

Whether that's adding new licenses for new employees, creating new customizations as the company grows and training on any new features.

If there are gonna be any problems to adapting to a new tool, you really need to be able to trust the solution provider you choose, which makes that research and the aspect of finding out what that implementation process looks like, a real big key to choosing a new solution.

Now we've got another spot here for some audience participation.

So thanks again for last time.

If we could all maybe pull out our phones again and scan this QR code.

What functions would you prioritize for your food business startup?

So, is the focus on the manufacturing?

Is it on distribution? Is it on food safety, retailing?

You're able to, once you scan this QR code, to rank some options here.

So you do have that option to choose a few.

So I'll pause here for a few minutes as people go ahead and answer that question.

I think that's probably enough time, I'll stop sharing here.

Eric, if you want to go ahead.

- Thanks, Jason.

Hopefully everyone can see my screen here.

Jason, can you see...

Right now you can see the Mentimeter results, right?

- I can, yeah, and I see food traceability is the number one.

That's always good.

- Well, I mean, maybe it's a bit biased, but yeah, interesting to see.

So inventory tracking, obviously, those two go hand in hand.

It's hard to have accurate inventory tracking or tracing if your traceability isn't really set up to be transparent or to have that traction or that tracking.

Shipping/receiving management, obviously, again, go hand in hand.

Procurement/purchase order management, collections/billing, and then training documentation.

Awesome, I really appreciate all the participations.

We had nine participants, again, thank you very much.

And Jason, why don't I hand it back over to you?

- I will share again. I'll put my screen up.

Perfect. So for next steps, we've talked a lot about these different solutions, kind of the traditional method, which sounds like a lot of people are already familiar with.

We've seen a bit about those ERP platforms.

And so now we're gonna take a quick look at one of these smaller solutions here.

So like I mentioned before, I work for Caddy, which is one of these cloud-based solutions.

So to really just better illustrate how these digital solutions can impact traceability, I'm just gonna share a quick demonstration of what one of these cloud-based products could look like.

So our focus is on food safety or food traceability and safety.

So it might vary a little bit from one of those QMS or Document Management System, but we'll just take a quick peek at what you can expect.

I'll start with that front-end data collection piece, so how that system would be utilized day in and day out by floor operators, how you're filling out all those forms, and then we'll take a look at that back-end and kind of where all that real-time data can be utilized.

So we'll just take a quick peek there.

So I'll stop sharing my screen with the presentation here, and I'm gonna go ahead and share my screen from my phone, and we'll be able to take a look at the application itself.

Get me off the screen there.

So hopefully everyone is able to see my screen here.

So I've got my cell phone that I'm working on right now.

What we see with a lot of our current customers or folks that are moving to digital solutions is having the digital forms being accessed, whether it's on a work cell phone, whether it's a tablet in the facility, whether it's several tablets, maybe one at each phase of production.

And so that's what we have here, I've got an app that works on both iOS and Android.

And we can see I'm taking to a main login screen at the start of the day, and this is, again, with that theme of food safety and traceability, wanting to make sure that each form is signatured by who did it and timestamped.

When folks log in given their unique id, you have that access to kind of track who did exactly what.

So I'll go ahead and I'll enter my login, and we can see here, I'm then taken to a screen where all of the forms that are available to me are accessible.

So we talked about those different forms, whether it's the receiving, production, packaging and shipping.

We can see I have access to all of this.

And with any of these tools, customization is gonna be a big part.

So whether that's only giving folks in receiving and shipping access to the receiving and shipping forms or maybe giving a supervisor access to all of those forms, you do have that option.

So for today's example, I've got a small bakery set up in my facility.

So I'll go ahead and I'll show a receiving form, what that looks like to receive some ingredients.

I'll create one quick batch of some chocolate chip cookies, and then we'll flip into that back-end and I can show you, what we've seen in that real-time data already.

So I'll start with our receiving form, and there are a few different ways this is done.

In our system, you can have both an expected delivery or an unexpected delivery.

So if you know that you're getting a shipment of 500 pounds of flour on Friday the 17th, you can have that preloaded into the system.

So then when you're receiving team is coming in, they're just selecting what they know is coming in.

So I'm gonna select our baking soda today and we can see that I'm gonna be selecting a lot of these as preloaded information.

It's dropdowns, it's selection, and this is kind of that attempt with digital solutions to move away from human error.

So you're not having to type out baking soda and maybe someone puts a capital S and someone doesn't, so then when you're looking at the systems in a Excel sheet, it comes up as different files.

A lot of this is gonna be set in some presets in the back-end of the system, so folks are just able to choose what they need while they go rather than have to do a lot of that manual data entry.

So I'll go and I'll select this baking soda, we can see the supplier it's coming from, which carrier it's coming from, we can enter our lot code.

We also have the option here for OCR capability.

So folks just want to scan that lot code as it comes in and then confirm the amount that we have coming in, add a best by date, one month out, and then we're taken to this confirmation screen.

So this is similar to, at the end of any paper form, maybe you need to initial to confirm you've checked everything here, you have to physically go ahead and check off all of that information that's already been entered.

We do have that camera icon.

The beauty of using a digital system is you have access to that camera.

So if you want to capture a picture of the PO, the COA, a picture of the item itself and save that with the record, you can go ahead and save that, and we confirm all of our information.

And then, as of course all businesses run a little differently and everyone has different things they need, on any of these solutions you can customize.

So here we've customized a few different questions that are asked on any receiving form.

So, is the condition satisfactory?

Is there packaging material? How is the trailer?

And do we have the COA?

And so you can go ahead and submit that form.

And now in real-time on the back-end, we'll see in just a moment, that form exists.

So if I'm working in the office, I can see that inventory is now in our system and we're good to go.

For one more form here, I'll go into production.

Like I mentioned, we're working in a bakery in the setup, so I'll go ahead and create a batch of our chocolate chip cookies.

So we can see, again, I'm choosing between my options for batches, I'm not having to enter my recipes or anything, that is gonna be all already in the digital system so it's presented to me.

So I'll go with our chocolate chip cookies.

Today, I'm just gonna create one little batch.

And again, the beauty of a digital system is this is all going to be auto suggested to me.

So that batch code we can see March 17th, this is the third batch I've created today.

The quantity and the best before date are all suggested based on the system.

And then with all of our raw materials here, it's gonna be suggested based on FIFO or FIFO, whatever is used.

So you can know that with that inventory management, you really know exactly what's in your facility.

It's gonna suggest those lot numbers, it can suggest multiple lot numbers if you're fully depleting.

And again, we have to check off all of this information before we can go forward.

And one more thing I'll touch on while we're in here, a flag for a hold or flag for review.

So maybe I need to flag for review because the oven is broken and I need someone's attention.

So with the traditional method, maybe that's running up to an office and flagging a supervisor down, maybe that's giving a phone call somewhere.

Here with Caddy, you're able to do that right in the system.

So as I log that production form but it's flagged for review.

Since I'm set up here as an administrator, we can see that I have an operation console, a notification, so I need to take some action.

So if I go in and go under my actions tab, I can see that there's a flag for review under a chocolate chip cookies.

I can review that who logged this, when did they log it, and what is the reason it was logged for review.

I could create a non-conformance log if needed or I can mark that as complete.

We can see now that form is successfully logged and we're into the rest of the system.

So I'll go back and that's our main screen again.

Obviously, with all of these solutions, there's a lot more to show, but for the sake of time today in our demonstration, and just getting kind of a quick overview of what these solutions look like, I'll now shift gears over into our back-end solution and we can take a look at that.

So I'll stop sharing here on my phone, and I will go ahead and share screen on my desktop again.

Alright, so I've got now up our back-end solution, so this is gonna be what folks are using in the office.

So at any given point, what you're kind of using to access that real-time data to use anything that's been logged.

So we can see on the left, in our specific example for Caddy, our solution, you know you have access to your inventory, traceability reports, form finders, and then a lot of back-end solutions.

So, managing your forms, managing your users, working with your presets, and then actually our new customer and supplier management portals, which can really help with the document management aspect.

But again, to keep things brief today, I'll go ahead and I will create or look through our inventory and we'll start there.

We can see right now we've got our baking soda, so if we want to click into any of our inventory, we can click in and get some more details.

So this is that lot of baking soda that we just accepted just a moment ago.

So already in real-time we can see the lot number, the quantity, when was it received, where was it received, which supplier did it come from, and you're able to use some real-time analytics with the inventory.

So we can see over this weekly period how much was used, how much was unused, to give you some of that insight of, am I ordering the right amount of inventory, and we have that option here for any of your raw materials, any of your packaging.

So if you wanna look at the different lots within your facility, you can take a look through all of these different ways in that inventory tab.

Then I'll slip down to our traceability report.

So we mentioned before, traceability being a big thing with these recalls.

So if he needs access to those forms rather than running down to Martin's office, again, and trying to dig through his files, into solutions like this, you're able to create these reports.

Sorry, Martin, I see you raised your hand.

'Cause I mentioned your office?

- Yeah, just as we're going through here, and I know you're focusing a lot on manufacturing, but these types of systems will also equally work well for like a farm operation, right?

For harvest records and...

Are you guys doing any kind of work along those lines that you could talk about?

So some of the things like would be harvest sheets, seeding, like when somebody seeds a field or something along those lines.

- Yeah, thanks for bringing it up, Martin. Great question.

So yeah, obviously, today I'm focused on the bakery aspect, that's what I've got my environment set up to, you know, for a food production side.

But with all of our forms, you can actually just go down here, you have the option to customize any of our forms.

So like Martin was just mentioning, if there's different things you're looking for, whether that's a seeding or something like that, or maybe just on your traditional packaging form, you have some different requirements than maybe the system has, you're able to go into any of our forms and add some custom elements.

So whether that's certain check boxes, temperature checks, weight checks, something like that you need, or you have the ability to go back and you can just create a brand new form.

So if you need that check at any given point to change anything, 'cause obviously not all businesses are the same, everything's gonna work a little differently.

So you do have that access to create those different forms and really track the information you are looking for.

Thank you, Martin. - Yeah, as part of this traceability rule that just came out, a lot of the farmers are gonna be tasked, especially those that have qualified or specific types of crops, they're gonna have to be tracing that to the farm where they harvest, when they harvest, and all that stuff.

So really it's just changing the fields of what you want.

And again, this is pretty, pretty darn adaptable for anybody, right, for any kind of operation?

- Yeah, that's the beauty of, obviously, our system, but any of these digital solutions is it's a little more adaptable on the fly than having to go back up to the office print out another piece of paper, switch things like that.

So yeah, great point, Martin, thanks for bringing that up.

But yeah, you're able to really just switch what you're exactly looking to track.

So obviously today with this bakery, they're looking at food production specifically, I have all these forms, but you can add custom forms to our system and really get that tracking still through there.

I'll jump back here just to our traceability report.

So in this scenario, if I need to go ahead and do a mock recall, maybe I'm trying to get into a new retailer, and I want all of the information on a certain batch, in our system, you're able to report on either a date or a specific lot or item code.

So if I go in and I'm looking for maybe one of our batches, I can take which types, so I'm looking for one of our chocolate chip cookies, and I can enter the lot code if I have it, and there's some options for drop down here.

If I create that report, now I'm seeing in the report, I'm seeing all of the forms that were filled out, when it was produced, when it was packaged, when it was shipped, I have access to download all those forms in a PDF if you need that physical copy maybe for a recall or an audit, you can download it into an Excel sheet if you want to continue to work, or download with a CSV if you want to continue to work with that data and use it in other ways.

But you have that traceability report there, and along with that we have our form finder feature.

So similar, if you need, as we mentioned before for an audit, you need to go ahead and find everyone who is working on a specific date and you need to find all of their forms, you can filter by date.

So say the filter is today, and I want to see all of the forms that Jason Ellis filled out, myself.

Let's see.

By filter, I can see all of those forms that have already been filled out by that specific person in just a few clicks.

So rather than having to dig through that file or go into the cloud and kind of search, okay, which date was it? What was that file called?

You have access to something like that in just a form finder in just a few minutes.

And then the last thing I'll touch on here on this side is our suppliers feature, our customer feature.

Obviously, supplier management is a big aspect.

So if I step into one of our suppliers here, you're able to see what orders do we have from those suppliers, what's on hands now, what's been depleted.

You can keep any notes.

So here we can see Ron's placed a note to order some sugar next week from this supplier.

Any documents.

So here if you need certain documents, maybe you need BRCGS, GMP, or any document from any of your suppliers, you can upload it here for safe storage or you can go ahead and request those documents.

So if you have that contact, you can add that contact into the system, request that document, and Caddy will actually go ahead and request that document for you on your behalf so you can have that.

And it can keep up with expiry dates for any of those maybe certifications that are expiring yearly or monthly, so you have that access too.

So, in this system, there is that front-end data collection.

But really making sure that with any of these digital solutions, not only are you having an easier way to track any of that front-end data collection like we've seen through the mobile application, but you're getting that access to use all of that information in real-time in the back-end.

Whether that's through supplier management, inventory management, something like that, you're getting all of those options there.

But with that I'm gonna slip back to the presentation here.

I believe everyone's still able to see that.

And so our last slide here, we'll address any questions now, I think I can see a few in the chat.

But if there are no questions or at that point, I mean, I've got my email here, if you have any further questions if you wanna reach out and chat, my LinkedIn as well if you wanna connect, and actually this QR code goes directly to my calendar.

So if you've got some burning questions and you wanna chat a little bit more, feel free to do that.

But with that being said, I'm gonna pull up the Q&A here.

I've got some detailed questions here.

Caddy or alternatives have a way to record FISMA compliant process control points.

In your cookie example, if the temperature, oven baking times, CCP for us, that's something Caddy can keep track of us.

How complex can this go?

If we have a cheese make where we need to record many different time, temperature and pH points, is that possible?

So question there about FISMA compliant situations.

Obviously, with those new regulations, like Martin was bringing up, there's a lot of changes coming up to everyone.

So we do have that option, like I mentioned, with any of those custom fields you need on a form.

So if you know the time or the temperature of the oven or how long it's baking is something that you need to check, you can add that to any of the forms.

You can add a temperature check, you can add a time check, and they all are also timestamped, so it will actually have the exact time that those are stamped.

So if you needed to record different time, temperature, pH points, you'd just be able to add more fields to make sure that that's all being tracked through the way.

And then there's a second question there.

I'm at a very small scale dairy, and our PA dairy inspectors typically ask for paper records.

Do you know if inspectors are familiar with some of these systems and how they respond to them?

Another great question.

So, yes, we've heard that paper records are sometimes needed there, and with some of our clients right now, if that's the case, with the ability to download any of those records into a PDF or download them into Excel, once you get it into a PDF it's easily printable so you do have that physical copy there.

And with any of these systems, I didn't really touch on it much on ours, but there are those controls to make sure folks aren't changing things on the back-end.

You're not going back and editing forms to change them there.

'Cause I know that that's typically a lot of where that paper solution comes from.

So that kind of covers that one.

I think there's a few more in the other chat there.

Again, if that doesn't fully...

Reach out to your question, feel free to email me, we can chat a little bit more and then I see...

- Yeah, I think, I had gotten you, one question a little bit earlier that was more- - Oh, perfect. Yeah, as a small market gardener.

Yeah, so I think hopefully we touched on that, kind of the customizability of those forms and we're able to kind of chat about that.

So, if you wanted to look for something specific to farming, I'm sure if there's a very specific solution for small market gardeners, as we mentioned, there's plenty of different solutions, but a solution like ours with Caddy is very customizable to work with that.

Eric, I think you had a hand raised.

- Yeah, I think great points, Jason.

It just goes back to your other slide just about implementation and training.

We've seen it where if that implementation and that training is done right and is done the right way from the get-go, it pays massive dividends down the line and those efficiencies just compound.

It really has to become a part of sort of your company's culture where we do things the right way, we put in the right information and then that allows us to make better decisions with inventory waste, whatever it might be.

And also knock on wood, if there ever is any sort of recall or even an audit, some consultants do what they call vertical audits and they'll say, hey, this particular batch or this particular crop, whatever, I wanna know everyone that touched it, all their training records, where it went, where it came from depending on the context.

And this really just is a matter of making sure that you're partnering with a platform for a company that has that ability to customize whatever it needs to be to make sure it fits your processes.

Ultimately, that is the name of the game.

This platform Caddy or any other platform really, how are you making sure that it's being customized the way it needs to be to fit to your platform, to fit to your processes, and that you're communicating with all the stakeholders, whether it's someone on the floor of production, someone in the QA office or the person who might be your admin for the software, whatever it might be.

- So I have a question.

So I'm a small business guy.

I got small business, I'm really busy, I work all the time, love to put something like this in place, but I'm kind of busy and that, I'm not the most computer savvy person.

How do you guys propose helping with that?

Do you guys have consultants out in the field that come into companies, or is most of the training that you do online, or is there a combination of the two that you do?

How do you propose for a small company to get them going and get them started with this?

- Yeah, I'll jump in, Jason, if you don't mind, and then you can let me know if I missed anything.

Right now everything is done in-house, so any new partners that we bring on, our internal team, what we call is customer success, you basically have a dedicated Caddy point person to work with you on that.

And there is work that's involved with it, there's no beating around the bush, it does involve work.

But the idea is that it's paying off, again, it's paying those dividends down the line where it then becomes less work.

So one example is a partner of ours, they're a small brewery, and when we first started, we were working a lot with the owner.

But if you ask the owner today about a year in, and it may have happened before, but we recently spoke to him, he basically says, I don't hear about Caddy at all because now I have the people in place who know how it works, who properly understand the platform.

They just take care of everything, I don't hear about it.

And so we do offer those resources as just part of partnerships.

It's not additional upcharges or anything like that, which is a bit different from the ERP system where you might need an external consultant to come in.

They're not necessarily a part of that Oracle company or Microsoft, they're certified.

But, again, 'cause we're more of a niche service, it's someone that's internal that's been working with this tool, that's a company employee of Caddy's, for example.

And yeah, it's really just about laying the groundwork and laying the groundwork properly.

- Do you see the implementation of this?

Like I guess, in my mind how I would see it, and, again, if I was a small business owner, like I would do like one thing first, right.

I would get it in and I'd say, hey, I'm gonna do this first, and once you did that, then I'll do the next thing.

So do you suggest that like doing that, like doing one thing and then getting familiar with that and then moving on to the next until you got, you start to capture all the information that you need to capture versus being...

Like, I could see myself being overwhelmed, like wanting to do everything all at the same time, right.

But if I could pick one thing, get that down and then move to the next.

So is that kind of how people generally work with this system then?

- Yeah, I mean, again, Jason, I'll let you jump in.

But we've seen it where you start by importing the data that you have today.

And so that might be an Excel sheet that you bring in and then you go into your forms and say, okay, like you said, let's start with these three forms, let's get them into the system, and then let's start digesting that information on those forms.

Ideally, you want to get to a spot where, over time, it's all going through.

Because if you need to do a traceability report on corn, you're gonna need anything, any product that that corn went into, or whatever the case might be, you're gonna want sort of a full picture, and it doesn't necessarily help if you're only doing half the information.

But like you said, it's something that you can work up to over time.

Generally speaking, we've seen implementations anywhere from 30 to 45 days and it depends on the speed of the partner, on how fast they want to move.

Sometimes it's a little bit longer, sometimes it's earlier.

If they're a larger business operation, it might be a little bit more.

If they're less, they're smaller, it might be a little bit quicker. It depends.

Jason, anything there you want you wanted to add or maybe that I missed?

- No, I think you really hit the nail on the head there.

Yeah, thanks, Eric, I appreciate you sharing that.

And Martin, I don't know if you had any more questions.

I don't see, I don't think any more questions in the chat.

- Can I ask one?

- [Jason] Yes, of course.

- I got two questions.

One kind of goes back to, obviously with a cloud-based system, one of the things that we've been seeing, at least, a lot of food companies have been under attack for cyber situations.

How do you protect your system?

If I'm a small operator, and I'm seeing that a lot of ag-based companies today seem to be a lot more vulnerable.

How do I know my operation won't get tied down into a cyber attack situation?

- Yeah, great question.

So obviously that's front of mind for everyone.

You wanna make sure that you're not getting tied down into that.

And I think it kind of goes back to what we've talked about before about kind of vetting the solution that you're working with, and when it comes to that time of when you're asking those questions, which solution am I going with?

How do they specifically prevent that?

Are they working on their own servers?

Are they working with cloud servers, maybe through AWS or through Google, or what does that look like for them, what is their current situation?

Because, yeah, obviously when you're taking forms that are currently just held somewhere in your facility and it's safe that way rather than exposing it to the cloud, there are gonna be a lot of those questions as that first changes.

And I think it really just goes back to making sure you do your research that the files that you're gonna be uploading are somewhere secure.

Maybe like that is that big cloud like an Amazon or something like that.

I think, Eric, you wanna add something to that?

- Yeah, I guess, there is a reality that a lot of this is also on the operator too to make sure that there's processes in place.

So right now, again, this is Caddy specific, I can't speak to every tool.

Not everyone gets an email address and access to the back-end software to the administrative side of things, and we have sort of security solutions and protocols in place.

Again, knock on wood, we've never seen any issues, and I hope that's continues to be the case.

But nothing is totally a hundred percent foolproof.

It's a matter of making sure that you have sort of the policies and practices in place when someone leaves your business- - Maybe like BRC or Primus or SQF.

Are you guys integrating with them or they integrating with you to have things pushed over to any of the clients that might be connected through your services through Caddy?

I'm just curious.

- Yeah, there isn't a native integration like within the tool today, and sometimes it's actually a good thing because it's one less sort of avenue into the database.

But like I was saying, I think it's just like, when you're offboarding people, making sure that you're deactivating them that same day, and just being as secure as you can with your own data too.

Hopefully that- - Yeah, Rob had a question here from The Organic.

Can you talk about how you would accept, I think it's accept, in file receipts that you receive in and then updating expense data.

So I guess the receipts would be something like, say you brought something in and it's in a...

Can you actually put the receipt in there?

Can you scan that or something and upload it into the system?

- Yeah, great question.

I think that's gonna be obviously a little system to system.

So kinda like Eric was saying, I can speak to Caddy ourselves.

Right now, we can update a PO or anything like that on the inventory side, we're working on integrations with QuickBooks.

'Cause we see a lot of folks with those smaller businesses are already working with QuickBooks and that's kind of a solution that works for them.

Again, I can't really speak to exactly how every other company's solution would work, but typically, whether it's an integration with an already existing accounting software like a QuickBooks or whether it's under that document management facility.

So like I showed our Document Management System under the supplier, so you'd be able to upload things like that if you need there.

But you have those different options to work, whether it's an integration piece with something you already have or to just store them in that cloud specific software.

- Yeah, Sarah, did you wanna throw in on that?

- [Sarah] No, I have nothing to add.

- [Martin] Oh, okay. (both laugh)

- Perfect. Well, in that case, I think that looks like all of the questions.

So maybe, I'm not sure if the PennState Extension folks have any kind of closing thoughts, but for our side, I'll just thank everyone again for joining this afternoon.

Again, feel free to reach out via email, LinkedIn, or anything, if there are any questions that you still might have and we didn't answer today.

But thank you again all for joining and thanks to the PennState Extension team for having us today.

- Yeah.

Well, we appreciate you guys coming in today.

For us, we get a lot of questions that come into our extension based on these types of things and a lot of it is companies wanting to make their own systems.

And having been with mid-size companies, I know that it's a lot of work, it requires a lot of effort.

And then we had a chance to talk about this earlier, I thought, well, it's an option, it's a good option for smaller people, especially as they start to wanting to become digitalized and it's a lot less expensive.

With at least at some level of computer savvy, you can start to generate these types of systems.

So again, I think if somebody's looking at this, I think it is, it's a nice option to consider for your digitization.

Especially with some of the different rules that we have out there now.

Especially with traceability rules that are there now in place.

We also have, of course, a lot of the FISMA regulations that companies have to go through and have.

And, if you're looking to do something relatively, I'd say relatively quick, relatively easy, without going into a full-blown system, it's a good avenue to take a look at.

- I think the only thing I'll add to that is, we definitely sometimes encounter those partners who have built something on their own, and there's a lot of sort of individual risk in the sense that it takes a lot to build a system, it takes a lot to maintain a system, and to update the system.

And then if one or two people win the lottery and they leave, you know. (laughs)

They win the lottery, they go off to The Bahamas, it could leave the system sort of at a loss.

- And I've seen that, I've seen that where the guy, like, the guy's been doing it for years, he sets the system up and all of a sudden he is like, yeah, I'm gonna retire, or I'm gonna go to work for somebody else and do the same thing for them, (laughs)

and you're like, oh my gosh, what do I do?

So it certainly makes sense to...

Like this where you can have that support and you're not locked into a guy for your company.

All right.

Well, if you guys wanna hold on online for a few minutes here and I guess we'll say goodbye to everybody.

Yeah, Sarah, did you wanna finish up before I close the door?

- Yeah, I just wanted to give a quick reminder about the webinar next month, April 21st.

The registration site for that should be up at any time, so please check the PennState Extension website.

And also please remember to complete the very short evaluation survey upon exiting Zoom today.

So thank you.