Justifying a Digitized Testing and Sanitation Program
July 24, 2023
Video Transcript
TITLE CARD: Neogen Analytics
[Music]
TITLE CARD: Business Justification for Digital Transformation
TITLE CARD: Leah Pridoehl, Digital Specialist
Dan Dwyer: Leah, what are you hearing from customers on how they're able to justify moving forward with a digital testing and sanitation program?
[An image of the Neogen Analytics software is shared on screen with Leah Pridoehl and Dan Dwyer on the side of the screen. The Neogen Analytics software screen shows a page titled "New Submittal". The page has a form with fields for "Policy", "Description", "Sample Tracking Number", and "Notes". Beside the form is an area with information for "Receiving Lab", "Lab Address", "Lab City", "Lab State", "Lab Zip Code", "Lab Email", and "Lab Phone".]
Leah Pridoehl: A lot of the justification that I talk about with the current customers and partners that we have on Neogen Analytics today is a combination of digitizing your automation and the result data that comes from it. So I think when you're able to digitize the workflow and the data — combining those two together, rather than just one or the other, is really where a lot of that payoff comes into play.
[An image of the Neogen Analytics software is shared on screen with Leah Pridoehl and Dan Dwyer on the side of the screen. The Neogen Analytics software screen shows a page titled "RTE Meat". The page shows a floorplan of a building with green, yellow, and red dots showing sample collection points.]
Leah Pridoehl: Pathogen testing is in this spreadsheet. Allergens are over here. We have ATP on its own data manager. Product testing is over in another silo. Sanitation as well. Transcribing errors when you're getting results back from your lab into your Excel spreadsheet. Forgetting to highlight a positive as a hot spot on a map or even just missing a step in a remediation process. I think, digitizing again that workflow is a big key piece to reducing risk.
[An image of the Neogen Analytics software is shared on screen with Leah Pridoehl and Dan Dwyer on the side of the screen. The Neogen Analytics software screen shows a page titled "Sample Analysis". The page shows a table of data. The cursor clicks on the button labelled "Create Sample Analysis".]
Leah Pridoehl: You can really just create a sample analysis within Neogen Analytics. Add your test points submit it to your lab, and then the results are automatically received right back to Neogen Analytics, which really helps your real-time auto alerts as well. So really reducing that time from day you swab, receiving result, and completing your remediation, if needed.
[An image of the Neogen Analytics software is shared on screen with Leah Pridoehl and Dan Dwyer on the side of the screen. The Neogen Analytics software screen shows a page titled "New Submittal". The page has a form with fields for "Policy", "Description", "Sample Tracking Number", and "Notes". Beside the form is an area with information for "Receiving Lab", "Lab Address", "Lab City", "Lab State", "Lab Zip Code", "Lab Email", and "Lab Phone".]
Leah Pridoehl: You're really able to leverage The Neogen Analytics platform and utilize the system to ensure compliance for not only your internal policies but external or regulatory policies. So, for instance here, if I'm going to create a new sample submission for product testing.
[The cursor on screen moves over a drop-down menu under the field labelled "Policy". The screen scrolls down to a button labelled "Add Sample" and selects it. A pop-up window appears titled "New Sample" with form fields labelled "Sample Number", "Is this a Composite Sample", Floor Plan", "Location", "Start Collection Date", "End Collection Date", and "Collected By".]
Leah Pridoehl: I've just selected my policy. This is "Quarterly Pathogen Testing". You can fill in, of course, lot and tracking number, but when I go to add my samples now, instead of having to remember how much of the sample do I have to collect or what what analysis types am I sending this to the lab for, you can enter your sample number and then again relate it back to the floor plan and location to really increase that drawing of those lines together.
[The screen scrolls down in the pop-up window titled "New Sample" showing additional form fields labelled "Product Type", Category", "Reason", "Description 1", "Description 2", "Description 3", "Test Methods", and "Sample Size".]
Leah Pridoehl: You see as I scroll down it automatically has that this has to be tested for Listeria and Salmonella and here's my sample size options that I have to choose from so not going to have anybody accidentally pulling 2.5 grams they know that you're at least pulling 25 here. So really, again building in those policies in the background to ensure a policy-driven and compliant program will help increase the Integrity of the data that is now, on top of that, being automated and digitized for you.
[The screen changes to the Neogen Analytics program home screen. The cursor clicks "Environmental Monitoring" in the sidebar navigation and selects "Floorplan" in the sub-menu. The screen changes to a page showing the floor plan of a facility with multiple red, green, and yellow dots.]
Leah Pridoehl: Part of digitizing data, of course, is standardization, but really helping you draw a line for if I did end up on an "Out of Spec" on product, can I relate that back to, if I go to my floor plan, I see that slicer five did have a positive. That is where my product was manufactured, on that line, and maybe I was able to kind of draw that line to: "The sanitation process for this slicing area was not verified that day" and really help — instead of having to do the pin board and the yarn and be a detective on on a white board — help draw all those lines between those data points just right here and have it automatically done for you.
TITLE CARD: Neogen Analytics
The advancement of digitally automated testing and sanitation programs is accelerating. This is similar in many ways to our collective experience with other industries.
There are several examples we can draw from:
- Electronic health records transformed the way we interact with our healthcare providers and insurers. Gone are the days when our information was collected and stored in a color-coded paper folder system at our practitioner's office. Today, our health data is accessible by providers wherever and whenever needed as we move about in our lives and as our healthcare requirements change.
- All modes of travel services offer online booking and cater to our individual needs — from seating preferences to dietary choices, all can be selected quickly from an online menu of options. Employers often tie their expense systems directly to a travel booking platform of choice that features accommodations and travel services in one place. The old days of booking offline through a travel agent are long past.
- Most banking and financial services are available online, including direct deposit and electronic bill payments with no need for paper checks. Ask yourself: When was the last time you manually balanced your checkbook?
- Publishing may have seen the single greatest seismic shift from digital transformation, in the form of hard-copy books and periodicals versus e-books and websites. The internet absolutely has changed the way we access and consume information, whether for pleasure or for business.
When these, and many other examples of digital transformation occurred, there was resistance. You may recall the outcry: “How can we trust the internet to manage our money?!” At first, the extent of change seemed too drastic, as most major changes do. The same is true now as we advance into the “early adopter” phase of the digital transformation of food safety testing and sanitation processes. Just like then, we hear a similar refrain now: “How can we trust our testing data to the internet?!”
To answer this, we must establish a business justification for digitally transforming food safety testing and sanitation programs; business justifications are not always well understood, however.
Here are four ways to think about this based on real, proven, metric-driven business outcomes.
Risk reduction: Manually run testing programs are riddled with opportunities for error. Human error creeps in when paper and manual spreadsheet-based recordkeeping is relied on as the source of truth. Accuracy of testing program execution and diagnostic results analysis is essential, so why rely on manual paper and spreadsheet data? The exchange of information with the lab is another area where data can be mishandled or corrupted, and mistakes overlooked. Risk occurs any time that a presumed positive test result is missed or is flagged erroneously or is otherwise sent as a false positive, negative for pass/fail finding. A potential issue may be missed, or in the case of a false positive, resources may be wasted on unnecessary and expensive corrective actions. Reducing these instances of error provides immediate return on investment (ROI) by lowering both the risk and cost associated with proper management of food safety testing data.
Quality improvement: The faster an issue can be discovered and addressed, the more rapidly a problem can be identified, quarantined, and removed. Waiting for days or as long as a week to see an actionable quality management report impedes and delays the ability to address issues. Automation of this data and the analysis of trends can occur in near real-time and point to problems before they impact quality. This change provides business justification in several realms, including production continuity, customer relations, brand value, and sustainability performance.
Efficiency gains: Manually executing a testing program to verify the effectiveness of sanitation controls, even when performed precisely and in conformance with all internal policies, is an arduous, multi-step process. Neogen has found that automation of the process streamlines an environmental monitoring program (EMP) from 36 manual steps down to just 6, with the remainder being automated. This 6x gain translates to fewer resources being required to execute an EMP, while freeing up trained scientists to perform higher-level functions — such as analyzing the data rather than manually managing it within spreadsheets and pivot tables.
Staff utilization & retention: When trained scientists are freed from tedious and repetitive manual processes and can focus on their true calling, they tend to find greater job satisfaction and fulfillment. This translates to lower turnover, decreased costs for recruiting, hiring, and training, and greater business continuity. Over time, an automated EMP enables scientists to do what they do best — form hypotheses, test theories, and improve overall food safety outcomes through more effective means of testing, tracking, tracing, and eradicating harmful pathogens and contaminants from food production areas. This all translates to significant ROI.
To learn more about what ROI organizations are seeing with their digital food safety testing and sanitation programs, download our ROI white paper now!
Category: Food Safety, Consumer Goods, Dietary Supplements, Food & Beverage, Pharmaceutical & Biotech, Microbiology, Pathogens, Environmental Monitoring