Information support of marketing in the food industry

Abstract

The paper looks into one branch of Ukrainian economy - the food industry. It is established that marketing activities of food industry companies have some specific features, namely mismatching of an agricultural performance period and production time; a perishable nature of products, which necessitates tight time frames of storage and sales; production focus on the direct consumer; a high level of materials consumption of products released, which requires a large quantity of feedstock as well as high qualification skills and expertise from workers.

The activity of a domestic bakery is described. It is determined that the complexity of its production processes and increased information flows requiring in-line processing for acquisition of appropriate data served as a basis for introduction of the special 'Marketing' software by its Marketing Department. The conducted analysis of the information product allowed to establish that the user of the above software maintains routine accounting and control of product supplies. To that end, information is processed, parameters related to production and supplies analyzed. The software significantly improves operational efficiency owing to an increased number of accountable factors and reduced decision making time. That bundled software however makes no provisions for development of a unified integrated management system, which reduces the company operating efficiency.

It is established that to date there are many information systems available for food production automation, the Oracle E-Business Suite-based technology, developed by TopS BI, among them. It was offered for application at the food enterprise in question. The above system allows to automate production planning and management processes at various levels: from daily shop planning and management with step-by-step product quality control to scaled-up calendar planning of production, including that for a group of enterprises.