TIBERSOFT BLOG

Don’t wait – the things you imagined for foodservice data and analytics are here now. That was the resounding theme of this year’s annual conference with topics ranging in foodservice best practices from AI, to how to conduct best in class business reviews. Let's take a moment to recap what went down at this year's Navigators conference.

The foodservice GPO space is constantly evolving. Matt Stredney and his team at Conagra knew this was something they had to get in front of to ensure their bottom line wasn’t affected. With the complexities that come with data coming in from a number of different data sources, the opportunity for foodservice trade double dipping continues to be a real threat to CPG manufacturers.

With the prevalence of foodservice double dipping, the need to understand your data at a glance is crucial. See how foodservice giant, Smithfield Foods, simplified and organized their GPO and Contract Management Customer data with an eye to identify, eliminate, and prevent duplicate spending.

As we see it, foodservice trade double dipping can be avoided, and instead used as a way to improve transparency and negotiations with your GPO. Even without a system to find double dipping, there are manual ‘sniff checks’ that can be done. From there, find out three low tech ways you can begin to solve this issue.

Last week, we hit the ground running at the 57th annual IFMA Presidents Conference in Phoenix, AZ. As always, the event connects foodservice leaders from some of the largest operators, manufacturers, and distributors within North America. And this year, there was no shortage of great connections and conversations. It’s clear, the future of foodservice is reliant upon us focusing on the 3 T’s: Talent, Technology and Tough Competition.

Forgive the click bait title - but I am serious. Our work with foodservice manufacturers involves many CRM system implementations that cannot tell which operators are customers currently buying from them, and which are prospects. In the world of foodservice manufacturing, the only way to know this is by clear visibility to location level sales.

Thanks again to all the clients, guests, and colleagues that made our 2017 User Group meeting an informative success. This year we had more Client presentations and incorporated a real-time feedback utility for questions and surveys.

The theme was ‘Last Mile Execution’ where a lot can go wrong in the foodservice supply chain. The Client presentation keynote was delivered by Todd Schlewitt at Conagra.

New financial backing positions us for long term client innovation

Tibersoft has completed a transaction making it a fully owned, but independent operating company of CSI (TSX: CSU). This completed a search spanning many options for the company and I’d like to lay out the rational for why we chose this particular option more than just that it provides the optimal balance of value for clients, employees, and shareholders.

First a bit of housekeeping, our name and our team remains the same. We’re now part of the Volaris Operating Group.

The number one reason we chose CSI is the long term stability of the relationship. Unlike a more typical private equity buyer, CSI’s practice is to buy and hold companies for the long term. Tibersoft will now be able to make long term R&D investments that leverage and extend the OpTRADE database and Explore software platforms.

Last month Tibersoft quietly shipped the next generation version of our double dipping audit solution. But all the important people knew about it – our Audit Users. We had the idea for this version quite a long time ago. Basically, we wanted layer decision making right on top of an analytics tab loaded with audit exception data. But analytics aren’t supposed to do that. They’re supposed to just allow read only access – basically to sit there and look pretty. Ask around. Try to find a big data software solution that integrates the decision making right into the same interface.

Seeing bright sun here in the Boston for the first time in days, the ‘New Bunch’ had lunch with Mary Wilson and I. This picture was taken outside of Tomasso - TripAdvisor’s #1 in Southborough, MA. Boston is a competitive job marketplace so we always ask new employees ‘why did you choose Tibersoft?’ The answers all themed around a sense...