Hitting growth targets used to mean adding more people, more spreadsheets, and more workarounds. For a lot of mid-sized food manufacturers, that playbook is breaking down. Customers expect Amazon-level visibility. Margins are under pressure from tariffs and volatility. Leadership teams are realizing that they can’t keep scaling with disconnected, legacy systems that no one really trusts.
That’s the world Nick Avila lives in every day. As Vice President of Sales at Attivo ERP, he’s worked with hundreds of manufacturers trying to modernize without turning their operations upside down. His team takes a process-first, platform-neutral approach: understand how the business really runs, then connect the systems that will give leaders the visibility, control, and confidence they need to grow.
In this conversation at EATS, Nick digs into why end-to-end visibility has become non-negotiable, what “scaling smarter, not bigger” actually looks like on the plant floor, how right-fit ERP and integration change the implementation experience, and where AI and real-time data are reshaping day-to-day decision-making.
Q. EATS brings together companies at every stage of digital maturity. What trends are you seeing among growing food manufacturers who are starting to connect their systems end-to-end?
Nick Avila: The first thing I’m seeing is that they want to optimize their efficiencies, get more control of their operations, and scale up without increasing their overall cost. Especially today, the current economics are causing a lot of heartache for our customers.
For really small to medium-sized companies, a big need is visibility to their entire factory or production environment. A lot of these companies are coming from Excel spreadsheets or old, disjointed legacy systems. Getting real-time information is very difficult. When we’re talking to customers, that’s one of the first things they tell us: “We’re operating blind. We don’t know what’s happening in our factory,” or, more accurately, the information they do have is stale.
In today’s market, their customers are demanding quick response times. The old days of “I’ll get back to you in a couple of days or next week” are gone. There are competitors out there who can meet information requirements faster than you can. So if you don’t have a system that gives you that information at your fingertips, it’s a disadvantage.
Q. Do you find that leaders today are thinking more about visibility and agility than they were a few years ago?
NA: In the past, people were happy to run a report and then search through it. Then they said, “We don’t want a report; we want the report to tell us the exceptions.” Now it’s beyond that. They want the system to alert them when something bad has happened that they’ve defined as bad, and to alert them whether they’re in the office, at home, or in line at Starbucks. As an executive or manager, they want real-time information they can act on, wherever they are.
Q. Attivo’s message is about scaling smarter, not bigger. What does that look like for a mid-sized food manufacturer trying to operate with enterprise-level precision?
NA: Scaling smarter doesn’t necessarily mean getting bigger. It means being more effective and optimized in all your assets.
One example: we have a client who, because of their lack of systems and reliance on an old legacy platform, was using brute force to achieve inventory accuracy. They were just throwing bodies at the problem instead of updating their technology. By the time we started talking to them, they had six employees whose full-time job was running around counting inventory and production, counting inventory issued to jobs, ingredients issued, receiving, shipping — six employees doing nothing but that all day long.
With a new ERP, those six employees can be reassigned to something more productive for the company. That’s an example where scaling smarter is more important than just scaling bigger. You’re not just throwing bodies at something — you’re using technology to get better outcomes.
You also see it when you look at how quickly you can adjust your production. Customers call and want to expedite orders. Ingredients don’t show up. A production line goes down. If you’re trying to adjust all of that on paper, it’s extremely difficult. In an integrated system, making those adjustments is much faster and much easier. That’s where a mid-sized food manufacturer can start operating with that enterprise-level precision.
Q. Are there common turning points where a company realizes their current systems can’t keep up?
NA: I usually see three big ones that make CEOs realize their current systems can’t keep up. The first is customer satisfaction. We all talk about the Amazon effect. It started in the consumer market, but now business customers expect the same thing: seamless ordering, clear tracking, and, for make-to-order products, visibility into when an order goes into production, when it will be finished, and when it will be delivered. When a manufacturer can’t provide that level of information, customers notice. I’ve had companies tell me their customers said, “I love your product, but you can’t meet my requirements — I have to switch.” That’s a major wake-up call.
The second turning point is profitability. When you’re not optimizing your production environment or running a lean supply chain — especially with today’s tariffs and volatility — your margins take a hit. I hear from a lot of companies who don’t want to buy too much inventory, but also can’t afford to buy too little.
On top of that, many have no idea what it actually costs to make a specific product. They know their costs in aggregate, but if you ask, “What does this product cost you to make?” they don’t know, because their system can’t track it at that level. They don’t know which products are making money and which are losing money, and that becomes a real driver for change.
The third is employee satisfaction. A lot of old systems are difficult to use and prone to problems. The worst story I heard was a company whose system would crash when staff created an order. These were long, complex orders, and they had to start over from scratch whenever it happened. When people hate their tools and their job because of bad systems, they leave.
Q. A lot of companies still view ERP as a massive, risky investment. What’s changed about implementation and accessibility in the last few years?
NA: Let’s be honest: putting in an ERP is disruptive and it’s a challenge. Anybody who tells you it isn’t is lying to you. That’s just the truth of it. But it doesn’t mean it has to be horrible.
A lot of the bad reputation comes from old legacy systems. Everything had to be customized, and any integration to a different system was added custom work. They weren’t upgrade-proof, which made life difficult. On top of that, they were on-premise, so you needed an IT department just to run the software. You had to know the software and run the infrastructure.
Nowadays, with cloud-based systems, you eliminate a lot of that IT overhead. Publishers are working with subject-matter software — MES systems, quality systems, warehouse management systems — where integrations are more plug-and-play instead of big custom projects. Integrations are smoother and more seamless.
User interfaces are much better. It’s not just ease of use; I like to say ease of adoption. A system can be easy to use, but if people can’t learn it quickly, that’s still a problem. Now there’s better training and better tools to help users adopt the system.
What I tell customers is that when they’re implementing ERP, the two biggest factors are leadership and internal ownership. The company’s leadership has to be fully behind it. I’ve seen implementations where certain executives didn’t embrace it, and it caused a lot of delays. And they need an internal project manager. Without that, they don’t have enough skin in the game.
In the old days, the mindset was, “I’m going to buy a system, you do it for me, and let me know when you’re done.” That doesn’t work well. When implementations fail, it’s often because there wasn’t alignment between expectations, deliverables, timeframe, and communication. If that wasn’t nailed down during the sales process — if they didn’t do a thorough job of understanding the customer’s needs — it causes a lot of problems for everyone.
Q. Attivo helps clients find the best-fit system rather than forcing a one-size-fits-all. How does that change the implementation experience and long-term outcomes?
NA: There’s a joke about Henry Ford and the Model T: you could have any color you wanted, as long as it was black. A lot of ERP resellers are like that. They sell one ERP, so when they come to a client, they’re focused on their technology and how to fit the customer’s processes into their technology.
Attivo takes a process-first approach. We go to a customer and we want to find out all about their needs. We want to understand their current state and their requirements. We talk to every department. We take a very holistic approach. We’re not focused on the technology first; we’re focused on what the customer requires.
A lot of times, customers come in with preconceived notions of what’s available out there. They might be using a system that’s 20 years old and don’t realize the world has changed dramatically. So we educate them on what’s out there and what’s possible.
We also want to know not just their current needs, but their future needs and their vision. Are they going to expand manufacturing? Change who their customers are? Those things need to be addressed. We find that out during our discovery process. It’s not a one-hour meeting. It’s multiple meetings where we talk to all the various departments.
Once we’ve gathered that information and confirmed it with the client — “This is your current need; this is your future need” — we go back and look at the ERPs we support and implement and ask, “What best fits these needs?” Sometimes we’ll show them two options and say, “These are both really good; let’s demo them.” Sometimes we’ll say, “This is clearly the best one.”
That’s a big reason why we get strong customer satisfaction. We make sure the software fits their needs — not the other way around. That flexibility is what lets smaller manufacturers achieve that enterprise-level control without feeling forced into a box.
Q. How are you seeing unified, real-time data change how leadership teams make decisions day to day?
NA: One of the biggest changes is confidence. That’s a really big issue for companies: do they trust the information?
One of the questions I always ask when I interview a company is, “If I ask you how much inventory you have in the warehouse, what do you do?” A lot of times they’ll say, “I call the warehouse manager,” or “I walk out to the warehouse and count it myself.” My next question is, “Have you thought of looking at your system?” And they’ll say, “No, because we don’t trust it.” That’s a very common issue and it tells you right away they don’t have confidence in their numbers.
I literally saw this with a client: they had daily or weekly meetings where everyone — production, sales, quality, inventory — brought their own numbers. They would spend the first 30 to 60 minutes of the meeting reconciling whose numbers were right, because they were all different. They were trying to make group decisions from different points of view.
When you have a fully connected system, with all the transactions recorded in a centralized single point of truth, all managers are looking at the same information. When they make decisions, it’s based on accurate data, and that makes a world of difference.
Q. Are you seeing various teams become more collaborative when they’re working off the same data?
NA: That single source of truth breaks down operational silos. It lets people communicate better. Everyone does their job well, but they don’t always realize how what they do in one department impacts another.
We had a client who couldn’t close the month in a timely fashion. When we dug in, we found that the accounting department would do an activity, then the production department would do something that overwrote what accounting had done. Accounting had to redo their work. Because the system wasn’t integrated and they weren’t all looking at the same data, they were doing redundant work.
In an integrated environment — especially across inventory management, production management, shipping — that visibility and common data set help everyone be more efficient and more aligned.
Q. Food manufacturers are under growing pressure to be both efficient and sustainable. How are integrated systems helping companies hit both goals at once?
NA: On the sustainability side, there’s a lot going on. Food manufacturers are dealing with consumer expectations around organic, eco-friendly practices, carbon footprint — all the different stamps and certifications: organic, non-GMO, fair trade, and so on.
All that information, plus the contract management and validation behind it, can be handled with a combination of solutions — whether that’s ERP working with a product lifecycle management tool, or ERP with other tools to capture and manage that data.
One of the things we talk about a lot is claims: the claims manufacturers make that end up on the label. In today’s world, with social media, there are people out there actively investigating everything.
I know of a company that “right-sized” a product from 16 ounces to 14.5 ounces — no big deal in itself — but they didn’t update the labeling correctly. Because they didn’t have visibility through their solutions, that slipped through. Social media picked it up and tore them apart for not changing their formulas and labels.
There’s a guy in South America who takes products, validates the nutritional labels, and if he finds something different, he lets the world know through social media that “this nutritional label does not match my analysis.” Or you might claim fair trade because a vendor told you they’re fair trade, and then it turns out they’re not.
So having systems that capture that information, validate it, and give you quick access to it is critical. You want to get ahead of the social media storm. When I think about sustainability, that’s a big part of it now. It’s not just about doing the right thing — it’s about being able to prove it quickly with data when someone asks the hard questions.
Q. If you could leave one takeaway for executives walking the EATS floor, what should they be thinking about as they plan the next phase of digital growth?
NA: I think the biggest, hottest topic right now is AI. But we have to be clear about what we mean by AI, because the term is overused. People call things AI that really aren’t.
What I’m seeing from ERP publishers is that almost every one of them is putting AI tools into their systems. That means you can ask questions the way you’d ask a tool like ChatGPT: “Give me my top 10 customers by profit margin,” “Show me the items where we have the best on-time delivery,” and so on — real-life questions leaders need to run their companies. Having AI tools that let you ask those questions and get answers back quickly is a big deal, because now you’re not managing the report; you’re managing the decision.
On the machine side, we’re working on a project where a manufacturer is getting product from suppliers in a real-time lean manufacturing environment. They’re concerned their suppliers aren’t updating them truthfully on production. We’re helping them get that information proactively so the manufacturer knows what’s really happening on the supplier’s production floor.
It’s not just inside your four walls anymore. Customers are demanding to know what’s going on so they can be sure you’ll deliver on time. Contract manufacturers in the food business feel that pressure intensely.
I have customers who allow orders up to 10 p.m. at night, and that has to be reflected in the production schedule the next morning. Doing that manually is a problem. Having a system that supports it — and then an AI tool that helps you manage it — is critical.
So my message for executives is: look at AI and visibility in a practical way. Don’t get caught up in the buzzwords. Focus on real-life applications that give you better information, faster, so you can scale with confidence instead of guessing your way through growth.
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