Adifo has been developing specific software tools for the nutrition industry for more than 40 years and is one of the world leaders in this field. Adifo’s software is being used in more than 60 countries by both feed as food manufacturers. In short, Adifo has multiple products for supporting the whole procedure from raw material procurement to formulation and production. Furthermore, quality control, labelling, logistics and customer services are also included.
Adifo has two product lines (see www.adifo.com), of which BESTMIX® is one. The central application is BESTMIX® Recipe Management that enables businesses to manage their ingredient data and to perform calculations to generate product specifications containing nutrient values, list of ingredients, allergen information and other product specific data. This year Adifo will also launch its newest product called BESTMIX® SpecTrack for managing supplier data and compliance. This is a web-based portal to collaborate with suppliers: to share product information and documents like certificates and questionnaires which need to be in place before the first delivery and always to be kept up to date. For many food manufacturers, this is a daily struggle where Adifo can offer a solution.
Today, we have a customer base of around 80 clients in the food sector. These clients are mainly situated in European countries. Adifo is working on a strategic plan to further grow in the food sector. In order to make accurate predictions, the food sector has to be categorized and quantified into numbers of food manufacturers. The subsectors are categorized based on the production activities of the manufacturers like dairy, meat, fruits & vegetables, food supplements, etc.
For the EU region, categorization and quantifications has been conducted recently based on information coming from databases like Eurostat and national and international sector federations’ websites of the categorized subsectors. The next step in this project is to map the food industry for the US region in a similar approach as the EU region by consulting websites and databases from authorities like FDA food industry federations to know its potential.
In this project, the student will work out a strategic business plan for Adifo’s BESTMIX® for food for the US market. To target the US market, a fit-gap analysis is needed for Adifo’s products. As most of our current customers are based in the EU, the Adifo products for food industry are very EU orientated. There are a lot of regulations when it comes to producing foodstuffs and BESTMIX® is designed to meet the requirements in specific areas. There are however differences between the EU legislations and US legislation towards food labelling. A visible example is comparing two back-of-pack designs of food products of both regions. You will notice that allergens and nutritional values are listed differently. Only specific data is selected and visualized. In a practical study, flows like sourcing supplier specifications, creation of finished product specification, managing a quality control plan, etc. need to be assessed using the BESTMIX® products to demonstrate compliance to this market. If not, suggestions for changes need to be formulated.
For this study, the existing Adifo network can be used to address stakeholders from the business. In the end, there needs to be an overview of how market-ready Adifo’s products are for the Food business in the US and potential gaps need to be identified. Combined with the market study, this would become the input for strategical choices for entering the US market.