Page 26 - FoodFocusThailand No.185 August 2021

SPECIAL FOCUS
SPECIAL FOCUS

Why Asian Food Producers

are Turning to the Cloud

Consumers today are more demanding than ever, accustomed to personalized, digital conveniences enabled
by modern smartphones and constant connectivity. At the same time, global food compliance standards are
steadily increasing, in line with heightened quality demands and a growing general awareness about the
importance of food safety.

Rising Expectations tracking a myriad of ingredients used in food production to establish
While sustainability and food safety concerns are easy to understand, traceability, or increasing production efficiency to lower an
aspects of rising customer expectations can be traced back to emerging organization’s carbon footprint and minimize the use of water.
business models, such as direct food delivery and “cloud kitchens” that Yet, developing a new system using a traditional IT approach
prepare food for multiple outlets. Given how these services can deliver requires a massive up-front investment, which can also be prone to
your favourite dishes to your doorstep in about the time it takes to drive project overruns and be incredibly complex to maintain beyond a
to a restaurant, it’s easy to see how their popularity is skyrocketing in single location. On the other hand, a cloud-based approach can be
Asia—and reshaping customer expectations. deployed far quicker and cheaper, while delivering an always-
According to the Kasikorn Research Center, although COVID-19 has accessible enterprise resource planning (ERP) system that is highly
slowed down the global economy, it has changed the economic extensible and can be continuously improved.
environment and how businesses are conducted. Many food companies In a world of razor-thin margins and relentless pressure to move
have identified changes in consumer lifestyle and demand, and thereafter quickly, food producers have scant room for mistakes or
adapted and gained new business opportunities by tapping onto the cloud experimentation. Rather than building from scratch, they need
kitchen business model which has prompted an approximately 1.5-fold something that is proven to work and can be deployed straight away.
increase in food delivery volumes in the first half of 2020 compared to This makes a cloud ERP system1 ideal for accessibility, speed-to-
the same period of last year. It is expected that the number of cloud market, and reliability.
kitchens will increase in Bangkok and the metropolitan at least 50 by the Moreover, data stored within a single cloud repository can serve
end of 2022. as a single version of the truth across the entire organization, nullifying
Whether delivering cooked or personalized selections of ready-to-cook potential finger pointing between departments before they begin.
items, innovations like direct food delivery raise new challenges for food Having partners and suppliers on the same page, offers the added
producers. Foremost is the question of traceability. Where does the blame benefit of helping to ease supply chain enhancements and new
fall should food be contaminated, or when allergen-free meals or produce innovations.
are inadvertently stored with other types of food during delivery? Without
a comprehensive tracking system, food producers cannot be certain that Why the Cloud Works
problems occurred outside of their remit. Once in the cloud, the possibilities expand dramatically. Previously,
As the Asian market matures, customers are also more concerned disparate processes and independent silos can finally be integrated
with sustainability. The extensive use of plastic packaging and inefficient as part of a coherent whole, offering deep insights into interrelated
food supply chains are just two examples of practices that don’t fit well business processes that were not previously evident.
in an environmentally conscious world. And any conversation around New technologies can also be implemented more easily in the
sustainability cannot preclude the water used in food production, given cloud. For instance, a food producer in Asia turned to the Internet of
the finite nature of potable water. Things (IoT) to equip its herd of cows with wearable sensors. With
data from its herds available in the cloud, the producer was able to
A Better Approach access a host of invaluable data necessary to raise healthier, faster-
With the judicious application of technology, food producers can manage growing animals.
their disparate challenges—meeting evolving customer requirements,

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