Part 1: How to Calculate ROI for Food Quality Management Systems - Strategic Data Collection

Last week, I was on a demo call with an FSQA manager who said,

"Kevin, I know we need a digital plant management platform. My operators are drowning in paperwork, we're chasing supplier certificates, and I spend half my day hunting down signatures. But when I go to my CFO, the first thing he'll ask is 'What's this going to cost us, and what are we getting for it?' And honestly, I don't have those numbers."

FSQA managers know their pain points intimately, and they live with them every day. But translating those daily frustrations into dollars and cents that resonate with executives is where things can get tricky.

Here's the good news: building a compelling ROI case doesn't require an MBA in finance. It just requires some strategic data collection and knowing where to look for the biggest wins. Let me share the step-by-step approach I've seen work time and again with facilities across the country.

Start Your Data Collection (Even Before You're Ready to Buy)

Here's what I tell every FSQA professional I work with: don't wait until you're ready to purchase before you start tracking costs. I've seen too many managers scramble to find numbers when their CFO asks, "What's our ROI going to be?" It's much easier to gather this information when there's no pressure.

I always recommend tracking these four key areas – even a simple spreadsheet works well:

Audit Preparation Time

Think about your last SQF (Safe Quality Food) or BRC (British Retail Consortium) audit. How many hours did your team spend digging through file cabinets, chasing down signatures, and creating compliance reports? I've worked with facilities that spend 200+ hours preparing for a single audit. At $85/hour total employee cost (including benefits), that's $17,000 just in prep time – and that's before the auditor even walks in the door.

What to track: Hours spent gathering records, moving pallets of binders, creating audit documentation, and following up on missing signatures.

Customer Quality Requirements

Every customer has different reporting requirements – some want COAs within 24 hours, others need detailed traceability reports, some require specific testing protocols. It's amazing how much time teams spend manually creating these custom reports for each customer relationship.

What to track: Time spent on customer-specific quality documentation and reporting.

Quick Reference: What to Track Now

Manual Data Entry and Paper Chase
This one always surprises people. I’ve watched operators log the same temperature three times—once on a receiving form, again on a line check, and again before shipping. Then someone retypes it all into a spreadsheet for the QA report. Weight checks, product quality checks—same story. It's like rewriting the same book every shift.

What to track: Westrock Coffee cut 500+ hours a year just by digitizing QA reporting—and they’re not alone. Start by tracking time spent on paper-based temperature, weight, and product quality checks. This can also include hours spent on duplicate data entry, hunting down paper logs, and manually building reports. You’ll quickly spot where digital capture could free up line staff and QA managers alike.

Overpack and Giveaway Costs

This is the big one most people miss—and where I’ve seen some of the most dramatic savings. In food, every ounce counts. If you're aiming for 12 ounces but consistently giving 12.9, that 0.9-ounce overfill adds up fast. On a line running 10,000 units an hour, that’s real money walking out the door.

Death Wish Coffee found they were overfilling by an average of 1 ounce per bag. Once they digitized their weight checks and added real-time SPC dashboards, they spotted the pattern and corrected it, saving $5.4 million a year. That’s not a rounding error. That’s margin protection in action.

What to track: Average overpack percentages by product line, raw material costs per unit of giveaway.

The key here is consistency rather than perfection. Pick one method and stick with it. Even 3-4 weeks of data will give you enough ammunition to build a compelling business case.

Your Foundation is Set – Now What?

Starting your data collection today is the most important step you can take toward building an unbeatable business case. In just 3-4 weeks, you'll have concrete numbers that transform vague pain points into quantifiable costs that your CFO can't ignore.

But collecting the data is only half the battle. Once you have these baseline numbers, you need to know how to analyze them, calculate realistic improvement projections, and package everything into a presentation that gets executives excited about saying "yes."

Remember: the data you start collecting today becomes the foundation that transforms your next CFO conversation from "We need this" to "Here's exactly what we'll save."

Why It Matters:
In my next post, I'll walk you through exactly how to turn your collected data into dollar figures that make CFOs sit up and take notice – including the three-scenario framework that will help you secure budget approval.

CFOs won’t greenlight software without seeing real financial impact, and your gut instinct about wasted time or giveaway won’t cut it. But when you show $17K in audit prep costs, 500+ hours lost to data entry, or $5.4M in overpack? That’s a conversation starter. This data is your ROI case.

Ready to build your ROI business case? Join 2,500+ food manufacturers already using SafetyChain to transform their operations. Most implementations pay for themselves within 4 months. Schedule a consultation to see how SafetyChain can help you quantify your digital quality management opportunities.