Are you getting the most from new product development to grow your business? Take a look at our product development checklist, the perfect manual for your food business successfully

If you’re planning to expand through new product development, it is invaluable that your approach and your choice of food & drink manufacturing ERP software meet your needs seamlessly. Use our checklist to discover how well your business currently supports its new product development activities:

Identifying market drivers

Do you know where the real opportunities for growth lie in your markets and categories?

Action point: Analyse how regulation and consumer preference are influencing new products and formulations so you can identify long-term trends that will lead to sustainable growth.

Following NPD best practice

Does everybody involved in NPD in your business know the key best practices and understand how to implement them?

Action point: Circulate best practice guidance to all NPD stakeholders, then conduct an audit to look for capability gaps, followed by an action plan for adoption.

Automate your NPD

Are your NPD processes spread across disparate systems, creating bottlenecks and bogging your teams down in unnecessary admin?

Action point: Look for an ERP software system purpose-designed for the food and drink industry with NPD best practices built in as standard.

Understanding your consumers

Do you have an in-depth knowledge of what motivates your consumers as well as their preferences and unmet needs?

Action point: Track significant trends and shifts in consumer behaviour and examine how other businesses have successfully tailored new products to them. Conduct interviews with your consumers to discover what motivates them.

Controlling costs and risks

Are you frequently making a loss on your new products or finding that consumers reject them because the price is too high?

Action point: Use an ERP system that enables you to fully control recipe management and formulations including the cost impact of ingredients. Your ERP solution should integrate NPD and recipe management with production, so you can calculate the true cost of the manufacturing process.

Increasing speed to market and maintaining quality

Are you compromising quality in your rush to market?

Action point: Take full control of your NPD process through your ERP system. Ensure your recipes pass seamlessly from NPD to production to delivery without error, and with full visibility into your quality control processes.

Forecasting demand accurately

Are you often left with excess stock of new products or the reverse, struggling to meet demand?

Action point: Use your ERP system to build accurate forecasting more easily, based on your historical sales data for similar products.

Get the full guide to best practice in new product development for food manufacturers