A balanced approach

The Balanced Decision Scorecard has been introduced to survey the attitudes of food industry professionals on a range of topics including cost, quality, innovation and speed to market. The tool then generates a personalised infographic with a character profile and supporting recommendations.

The Scorecard is designed to help those working in the food and beverage industry to understand how balancing cost control and product formulation with quality and speed to market can impact profitability and performance.

The tool is applicable to all job functions, from marketing to procurement and culinary to processing. Industry professionals can access the Balanced Decision Scorecard at Ingrediondeliciousbalance.com and find out if they fit one of four character profiles: quality protector, profit chaser, trend setter or food fashionista.

Charlotte Commarmond, marketing director, EMEA at Ingredion explains: “We recognise that the key challenge for our customers today is one of balance. It is about getting the right balance between delivering new and exciting products that meet consumer demand and are profitable.

“Our sector faces enormous pressures to constantly innovate, control costs and meet the expectation for restaurant-quality and home-style food. The Balanced Decision Scorecard helps those in the industry to think about all of the elements that are needed to produce great tasting food.”

Easy to complete, the Balanced Scorecard invites users to answer a series of questions on areas such as recipe and new product formulation, portfolio management and quality control, to reveal the emphasis they place on each area. Tailored insight then helps to understand how a particular mindset leads to focus in some areas, for example cost, at the expense of others, such as quality.

“We have a natural tendency to place greater emphasis on certain areas of what we do, usually due to a combination of personal preference and professional obligation. The Balanced Scorecard gets us thinking more widely about all the elements that are needed to produce delicious food and succeed commercially. We want to get people to understand about balancing the complexity of new recipes with the cost of processing them, about balancing the need to innovate with the creation of scale-able, market ready concepts. But we want to do so in an engaging and fun way, which is why we’ve developed this tool,” continues Commarmond.

Qualitative research by Ingredion showed that diverse audiences in the food sector faced the same challenge: how to develop products that don’t compromise taste or texture, quickly and profitably. The Balanced Scorecard is an interactive tool to help understand the key considerations to achieve this delicious balance.