Efficiencies aren’t often completely free – but the good ones pay for themselves quickly, then go on to save you time and money for years.
Given that there is some initial outlay involved in moving from PIF V5 to PIF V6, you need to know why you should make the leap. The electronic PIF V6 is replacing Excel spreadsheets, and works with software such as PIF Manager™. Here are three reasons why it pays to make the change.
- Time is money: no more repetitive data entry
Once you upload your existing PIF V5s into an online repository (Bizcaps can do this for you at no additional cost), you can say goodbye to retyping information from your suppliers or customers.
PIF V6 has been specially developed by the food and grocery industry to eliminate all the bumps and bottlenecks in tracking, organising, storing and sharing product and pricing information. As the AFGC says, PIF V6 is “faster, easier and more flexible to use” because:
- its structure is much more intuitive with improved workflow
- information is exchanged electronically – no more rekeying and no more transcription errors
- it is fully searchable, so all your information is at your fingertips
- it has enhanced interoperability, so it is much better at working with all your other data systems, plus those of your trading partners.
2. Let’s face it, one size never fits all
You can’t find a company identical to yours, so trying to squeeze your product information into a one-size-fits-all form never made much sense. PIF V6 includes four types of PIFs, with our system highlighting to the user which mandatory fields are required for sample, flavour, ingredient or retail ready PIFs. When a PIF is received and used with a finished product, you can save the ingredient details into an ingredient list and reuse this ingredient multiple times without retyping the allergen and Country of Origin details each time.
3. Fuss-free compliance
In a highly regulated industry like food and groceries, streamlining and de-risking compliance is a key business benefit. With PIF V6 the sector finally has an industry-agreed tool to capture and structure all standardised information about food products and ingredients in a single document. PIF V6:
- brings together all the new requirements under the revised Australia New Zealand Food Standards Code
- incorporates the Country of Origin labelling requirements – so when you move to PIF V6, you no longer need to worry about the AFGC CoOL PIF addendum
- includes new sections, not in V5, for nutrition, health and related claims including Health Star Ratings
- restructures the data collected on allergens to improve allergen traceability
- simplifies the section on Genetically Modified ingredients.
You can get started the easy way, simply importing your existing PIF V5s into an online repository. They’ll be secure and searchable, and will automatically populate about 55% of your new PIF V6s. You can add the rest of the information when you’re ready, but you’ll be saving time and money straight away.