How One of America's Top Produce Distributors Evolved to "Own and Execute on a Leading Food Safety Culture"

Indianapolis Fruit unlocked efficiency gains to cover their investment in collaboration, accountability, and insight.

About 225 staff at Indianapolis Fruit use Provision for process documentation.

Key Outcomes

When Indianapolis Fruit managers empowered their teams with usable tools, they unlocked three sustainable advantages for the company.

Visibility

While using paper, managers at Indianapolis Fruit found it cumbersome to keep a pulse on compliance. Paper documentation was often more inconsistent than desired because there was no real-time guidance for operators. And with no alerts for management, those inconsistencies were often detected days after paper documentation was submitted.

Using Provision, Chelsea and Chris have made it easier for teams to collaborate in the food safety program. Managers are now able to monitor compliance in real time, no matter their location. Data is easily searched and summarized to generate process insight.

Process Control

While they used paper, operators at Indianapolis Fruit developed varying approaches to food safety. This lowered predictability, prevented benchmarking, and complicated processes for managers. They wanted one central hub to control not only their docuemntation, but also the real-life procedures it reflected.

Chelsea and Chris leveraged Provision to unify operators' approaches to food safety. Procedures and work instructions were linked into related records, and they used the task center to delegate clearer responsibilities across teams. As a result, they have reduced variation and redundancy, allowing them to streamline processes and unlock continuous improvement. This has garnered positive feedback both internally and from auditors.

Food Safety Culture

The previous setup made it difficult to educate and earn total team buy-in for food safety at Indianapolis Fruit. Communication and understanding were strained by multilingual needs. It was challenging to reinforce employee training, because ongoing guidance was limited in the paper forms. Managers were strained to measure sentiment and performance over time.

Chelsea and Chris used Provision to make food safety more accessible and top-of-mind. They improved team accountability by clarifying roles, responsibilities, and results. Automated translation improved communication and understanding. Escalation workflows and reporting made it easier for leaders to get involved, irrespective of their locations. And when actionable business insights were uncovered, it furthered the commitment across multiple levels of the organization.

Provision is accessed from a wide variety of devices, including phones, tablets, and computers.

How They Did It

Indianapolis Fruit accredits their success to a few key factors that differentiate digital solutions and their implementation approach.

Prioritize Non-Technical Staff

Digital solutions can fail if operators perceive them to be complex or time-consuming. Indianapolis Fruit's staff have praised Provision for its usability and low barrier to entry. Work instructions guide operators through food safety records, made easier by live translation and automated rules. This has reduced frustrating mistakes and saved time, helping Chelsea and Chris to earn universal adoption across their teams.

Create Clear Responsibilities

Indianapolis Fruit uses Provision’s task centre to automate reminders and overdue tracking for documentation that could easily be overlooked. As a result, their teams are more aware who’s doing which activity, how to document it, and when it’s due. This has helped them maintain SQF compliance.

Enable Faster Detection

Indianapolis Fruit has critical limits and other rules in their Provision records that automate alerts when deviations occur. They use the feature to kickstart escalation workflows for managers, so they can respond to and resolve issues faster.

Unlock Data-Driven Root Cause Analysis

Indianapolis Fruit unified all their process data in Provision to eliminate blindspots and expedite audits. They use custom reports to search, sort, and summarize this data – allowing them to investigate issues more efficiently.

Integrate Systems

Indianapolis Fruit integrated Provision with their existing ERP system, so data could transfer between platforms seamlessly. This has helped the team's visibility and coordination, contributing towards audit performance.

Lean on Expert Services

Chelsea and Chris used Provision’s implementation services to configure Indianapolis Fruit’s account. By closely mimicking their paper forms in the digital platform, they reduced change management for their teams. Training services helped ease the transition and contributed to strong adoption across the organization.

Solution Summary

By prioritizing usability in a smarter system, Indanapolis Fruit has reached new heights in collaboration, accountability, and insight.

Indianapolis Fruit invested in powerfully clear data to foster a more engaged food safety culture. Using Provision, they’ve helped operators execute their daily activities with less confusion, while enabling managers to better identify, investigate, and resolve issues. This has furthered process control, benefiting both safety and quality. Along the way, Indianapolis Fruit has unlocked time savings to deliver a sizeable return on investment.

Indianapolis Fruit managed more than 3,000 digital records in its first year on Provision, using the data to automate management reporting.