Digital Transformation can improve Food Quality Incident Management

Digital Transformation can put you in control of Food Quality Incident Management

Whether you’re a regional, national, or global multi-brand retail food business, strong food safety practices along your supply chain, coupled with a modern Quality Incident Management System and Food Recall and Withdrawal software, are must-haves as the consequences of serving unsafe food can be serious on many fronts. In addition to the health risk for customers, it can greatly impact the brand. In fact, according to a recent survey, six in 10 people said they would never go to a restaurant again if they contracted a foodborne illness while eating there. 

With the potential to harm your customers and your reputation, it’s best to think of food safety and quality management as a central part of your overall business strategy starting in the supply chain all the way through to your locations. Even with the best processes and systems in place to ensure quality and safety from the source, once unsafe food has made it into your locations, being able to quickly identify, document, track, and remediate food safety issues is non-negotiable.

Brands that embrace the changing digital landscape and are open to new and improved processes can not only detect and address issues earlier and faster, they can also stand out from their competitors. A focus on consumer safety that goes well beyond mandatory requirements, can ultimately enable you to build lasting trust with your customers, and deliver the ultimate guest experience. 

Inspire Brands', Sonic Drive-In is an excellent example here. You can learn more in our Sonic Drive-In client success story, but in short, they use CMX1’s Quality Incident Management and Product Recalls modules to monitor quality and food safety issues in their supply chains when reported by their Driven-Ins, and to take immediate and swift action to address them. 

So how might your brand leverage digital solutions to consistently improve food safety within your organization? And is there a simple way to create harmony in your processes? 

The importance of Food Quality Incident Management

When it comes to reporting and managing quality incidents (aka product complaints), many organizations struggle with too many manual processes, inflexible systems, and a lack of consistency, sometimes leading to poor reporting and substandard management of food safety issues. Without visibility, it is nearly impossible to identify trends and systemic issues.

CMX1's Food Quality Incident Management software gives you the ability to positively impact the timeline of an incident. You have access to case management tools and workflow automation designed to ensure the appropriate parties are involved, and that the right steps are followed for fast resolution. Each incident reported is associated with a location, the type of issue, the product(s), and the associated supplier(s), which at a chain-wide level, provides key reporting metrics on which partners and products are excelling and which are falling short of expectations. CMX1's Food Quality Incident Management software also monitors all of the incidents reported and automatically notifies your team when trends are detected for a particular supplier or product. Too many issues within a designated time frame can initiate Supplier Corrective Action Requests (SCARs) requiring suppliers to provide Preventative Actions and Corrective Actions (CAPAs) documentation.

With automation and monitoring, you can improve company performance, increase profit, and positively build your brand when you correctly manage food safety before, during, and after incidents.

Our very own Jim Hardeman covers the relationship between continuous improvement and effective incident management in this blog post, “It’s absolutely imperative to be proactive rather than reactive when issues arise for mitigating risk, limiting economic loss, and protecting consumers”.

A comprehensive approach to managing food safety

Of course, the best approach to managing food safety is in the preventative measures, processes, and procedures that start much earlier in the process when selecting and working with your suppliers and the products you are sourcing - long before the food gets into your locations. 

The CMX1 platform is designed to be a comprehensive solution for managing and monitoring food quality and food safety throughout the entirety of the supply chain including:

• The evaluation, onboarding and ongoing management of your suppliers 
• Managing supplier compliance through audits, inspections and certifications
• Managing your raw material and finished product specifications including finished product standards and tier 2 supplier sourcing
• Continuously monitoring the quality, consistency and safety of your products
• Quickly assessing and responding to food quality incidents
• Swiftly managing product and food recalls

Sonic Drive-In is one of several enterprise brands that have turned to CMX for help with quality incident management.

David Abney, Vice President of Quality Assurance writes, “CMX1 was the only solution that addressed our business problems, and the flexibility of the platform allows us to address issues that we never imagined we could solve. It is easy-to-use and allows us to analyze our results and manage our supply chain more efficiently." 

Hungry for more on Quality Incident Management or CMX1? 

Then feast your eyes around this article, where Jim Hardeman goes into detail about the relationship between continuous improvement and effective food quality incident management.

You can also visit our solution pages to learn about the CMX1 Platform and how it helps companies of all sizes to gain control and transparency over their supply chains, deliver quality products and services, and ensure compliance and drive performance across their locations.