The FSQ Compliance Playbook
Are these five barriers putting your brand at risk? See how to break through.
INTRO
Why compliance needs a new playbook
If compliance isn’t fueling your growth, is it quietly stalling it?
Today’s food and beverage (F&B) brands face constant disruption, from shifting regulations and rising consumer demands to supply chain volatility and shrinking margins. In this environment, passing audits is only one piece of the puzzle—true compliance must also support operational speed, supply chain trust, and product confidence. And yet, many FSQ teams are stuck fighting the same fires year after year.
So, what’s in the way?
In our work with the top global F&B manufacturers, five persistent barriers rise to the top:
Manual processes
Paper trails and spreadsheets slow decisions, burying teams in repetitive tasks instead of progress.
Supplier fatigue
Endless follow-ups and inconsistent tracking drain time, patience, and productivity.
Compliance blind spots
Missed expirations and unmonitored risks stay hidden until they cause costly surprises.
Siloed teams
Siloed systems keep FSQ, procurement, and R&D out of sync, blocking collaboration.
Audit panic
Outdated records and missing documentation spark chaos that turns every audit into a fire drill.
These aren’t isolated issues; they form a cycle that keeps organizations stuck in reactive mode and increases exposure to risk. And the longer they go unaddressed, the more they cost in time, trust, and missed opportunity.
This playbook was created to break that cycle.
In the sections ahead, you’ll learn how to overcome each of these barriers—and discover the real-world breakthroughs of a multi-million-dollar ice cream brand that modernized compliance without melting under pressure. Whether you’re navigating new markets, preparing for audits, or launching innovative products faster, let this playbook be your guide to climbing the compliance maturity curve—faster and with fewer surprises—using a smarter, digital approach.
THE CURVE
The Compliance Maturity Curve
Compliance shouldn’t feel like a game of regulatory Whack-A-Mole. But that’s exactly what it becomes when documentation lives in inboxes, updates go unchecked, and teams are left reacting instead of planning. Between evolving regulations, increasingly complex supply chains, and rising demands for transparency, compliance has become a full-time, cross-functional challenge—and most teams are still managing it with yesterday’s tools.
According to the TraceGains 2025 Digital Divide Report, a staggering 69% of teams are still reliant on spreadsheets and emails for core operations. This doesn’t just slow teams down; it introduces risk at every stage, from sourcing and quality checks to audits and market launch.
To understand how organizations can move beyond this inefficient model, we introduce the Compliance Maturity Curve—a framework that maps the four stages of compliance maturity in the F&B industry. Each level represents a step toward less manual effort, more visibility, and stronger supplier performance.
Climbing the Compliance Maturity Curve in F&B
STAGE 1
Siloed compliance (manual and reactive)
This is where many teams start, and where many are stuck. Supplier documents are stored in inboxes or static folders. Certifications are tracked in spreadsheets that are only as good as the last update. Teams scramble before every audit, wasting time and still risking non-compliance.
Common mindset: “We’ll deal with it when the auditor calls.”
STAGE 2
Fragmented digital tools (digital but disconnected)
Some digital systems are in place, but they don’t talk to each other. Shared drives and occasional portals help, but supplier updates still require manual follow-ups. Collaboration is ad hoc, and document collection is a manual burden. Visibility is limited, and it’s hard to spot trends or risks in supplier behavior.
Common issue: “We have the tools, just not the time to use them right.”
STAGE 3
Networked compliance (connected and collaborative)
Teams use a networked platform like TraceGains to track supplier documents, automate alerts, and manage workflows across departments. Everyone sees the same data in real time, and compliance becomes a shared responsibility, not an afterthought.
New reality: “We’re no longer chasing compliance—it’s built into how we work.”
STAGE 4
Strategic compliance intelligence (predictive and proactive)
At the final stage, compliance becomes a strategic advantage. Teams use supplier scorecards, historical performance trends, and built-in regulatory updates to anticipate issues and make smarter sourcing decisions. The result: fewer surprises, faster innovation, and greater confidence.
Next-level thinking: “Compliance intelligence keeps us ready, not reactive.”
BARRIERS
Barriers to maturity
Barrier 1
Paper trails, email chains, and spreadsheet chaos
For FSQ professionals, managing supplier documentation can feel like death by a thousand PDFs. Between COAs, specs, allergen forms, third-party audits, and certifications, it’s not uncommon for teams to manage thousands of documents across hundreds of suppliers. And yet, in many organizations, this process still lives in spreadsheets, shared drives, and email threads—each one a potential blind spot.
This is the first and most fundamental compliance barrier: manual processes. In fact, nearly 1 in 3 F&B professionals admit that their outdated systems have caused significant operational issues, based on findings from the TraceGains 2025 Digital Divide Report. The risks aren’t hypothetical; they’re happening now.
The result?
- Missed document updates and expirations
- Hours spent chasing down paperwork
- Frustration across FSQ, procurement, and R&D
- Increased audit risk due to incomplete or outdated records
And when something does go wrong—like an audit finding or a product hold—the root cause often traces back to a missing or incorrect document buried in someone’s inbox.
Break-through: From spreadsheet chaos to compliance clarity
TraceGains eliminates the need for inbox spelunking and spreadsheet gymnastics by centralizing supplier documentation into a single, searchable platform. Here’s how:
- Centralized Document Management: Every spec, COA, and certification lives in one place—linked to the right supplier, item, and location.
- Automated Request Engine: Teams can initiate document and form requests directly within TraceGains. Suppliers are notified immediately, and the system tracks outstanding actions; no follow-up reminders required.
- Smart Dashboards: Visualize the status of your entire supply base, including pending uploads, compliance gaps, and expiring docs.
These capabilities turn reactive fire drills into proactive workflows. FSQ teams no longer spend their days chasing paper; they spend them making strategic decisions.
Scoop of success: Hudsonville Ice Cream
“All of my COAs are saved in the right place, easy to access, and you can build these fantastic dashboards to trend performance over time.”
— Maria White, Director of Food Safety and Quality, Hudsonville Ice Cream
With TraceGains, Hudsonville Ice Cream moved from reactive document wrangling to a streamlined, searchable, and scalable compliance process.
Barrier 2
Supplier follow-up fatigue
It’s a familiar FSQ frustration: you send a document request to a supplier, wait a week, follow up again, get an outdated certificate, email again, and hope someone on the other end takes action before your next audit or product release. Multiply that process across hundreds of suppliers, and it’s no wonder teams feel stuck in a constant cycle of follow-ups, reminders, and rework.
This is Barrier 2: Supplier Follow-Up Fatigue—when the burden of collaboration falls mainly on the FSQ team’s shoulders. Whether it’s onboarding a new supplier, requesting a spec, or collecting missing COAs, the lack of structured communication drains time and introduces risk.
And it’s not just an annoyance; it’s a systemic issue. 55% of F&B professionals say their core processes have minimal or no automation, per the TraceGains 2025 Digital Divide Report. When it comes to supplier engagement, that often means important compliance requests get lost in a sea of emails, spreadsheets, and delayed responses.
Break-through: Stop the supplier shuffle—start real collaboration
TraceGains removes the guesswork and friction from supplier engagement by providing structured, automated, and transparent workflows for document requests and responses. Instead of endless emails, you get a repeatable process that saves time and builds accountability. Here’s how it works:
- Integrated Workflows: Whether initiated by R&D, FSQ, or procurement, every supplier request follows the same workflow, with clear ownership.
- Self-Managed Supplier Portals: Suppliers have their own workspace in TraceGains Gather® to upload documents, complete forms, and resolve issues—without needing reminders.
- Network Efficiency: With TraceGains’ patented Post Once® technology, a single document upload can satisfy multiple customers across the TraceGains network, freeing suppliers from duplicate work.
With TraceGains, supplier collaboration doesn’t just run smoother, it scales smarter. Because you’re not chasing updates; you’re building a system that keeps itself in motion.
How Hudsonville made it work
“This has been amazing to have a streamlined approach, and a documented workflow process for supplier approval, whether it’s someone on the purchasing team who wants to initiate a supplier setup or someone from R&D. You can submit that into the process, and anyone can look up and easily see where the status of that supplier approval is.”
— Dustin Furney, Director of Supply Chain, Hudsonville Ice Cream
By replacing scattered communication with a centralized, transparent process, Hudsonville Ice Cream built a more agile, aligned approach to supplier management—where everyone’s working from the same playbook and knows exactly what’s next.
Barrier 3
Compliance blind spots that hit too late
You can’t fix what you can’t see. Yet for many FSQ teams, risks like expired certifications, missing documents, or late supplier responses don’t come to light until an audit is underway; or worse, when an issue hits the production line. Teams spend hours digging through folders and email threads, hoping nothing has slipped through the cracks.
This is Barrier 3: Compliance Blind Spots—a lack of real-time visibility into the health of your supply chain. And in an environment where regulatory expectations and customer demands continue to grow, delayed insights are dangerous.
The TraceGains 2025 Digital Divide Report reveals that 82% of F&B professionals now rank digital modernization as a higher priority than any other strategic initiative. Why? Because without access to live data, it’s nearly impossible to move from reactive compliance to proactive risk management.
Break-through: See risk before it sees you
TraceGains Supplier Compliance brings transparency to the supplier ecosystem by continuously tracking compliance status, surfacing potential risks, and alerting teams before they become operational headaches. It turns what used to be a manual inspection into an always-on monitoring system.
Here’s how FSQ teams gain control:
- AI-Powered COA Processing: Intelligent Document Processing (IDP) extracts and verifies COA data automatically, flagging out-of-spec results instantly.
- Real-Time Risk Monitoring: Track compliance status, outstanding CARs/SCARs, and document gaps across every supplier, location, and product line.
- Proactive Alerting: Set thresholds for expirations, missing uploads, or delayed responses, so action starts before issues escalate.
- Supplier Scorecarding: Identify which suppliers are consistently noncompliant, late, or error-prone—and use that data to guide sourcing decisions or trigger improvement plans.
With this kind of visibility, FSQ teams aren’t just reacting to the past; they’re steering the future. Instead of scrambling to explain what went wrong, they’re already fixing what could go wrong.
Hudsonville's vision for risk management
“Something that’s been fantastic with supplier compliance is the capability to enter in CARs. We went from this haphazard email back-and-forth—cross-your-fingers-for-a-response system—to one that’s fully automated and tracked. It’s been fantastic once again for measuring performance over time.”
— Maria White, Director of Food Safety and Quality, Hudsonville Ice Cream
By swapping spreadsheets for speed with TraceGains, Hudsonville gained the insight and control to lead, not lag, in a rapidly changing industry.
Barrier 4
Siloed systems, fragmented teams
Food safety and supply chain teams have a shared goal: protecting quality while keeping production moving. But in practice, they often operate in isolation. Purchasing might onboard a new supplier without FSQ involvement. FSQ might reject an ingredient without visibility into the supply chain constraints behind it. The result? Slowed approvals, duplicated work, finger-pointing, and misaligned decisions.
This is Barrier 4: Siloed Systems, Fragmented Teams—when vital teams lack a shared source of truth. And it’s more common than you’d think. In the TraceGains 2025 Digital Divide Report, only 6% of F&B professionals report having fully integrated digital systems across departments. That leaves 94% relying on fragmented tools, manual workarounds, or tribal knowledge to keep operations moving.
In an industry where collaboration is critical, disconnection is costly.
Break-through: One workflow to unite them all
TraceGains bridges the FSQ-supply chain gap with shared visibility, unified workflows, and real-time data everyone can trust. Whether it’s a supplier onboarding request or a corrective action follow-up, both teams are aligned on who’s doing what, when, and why.
Here’s how TraceGains brings teams together:
- Single Source of Truth: All supplier documents and certifications live in one trusted platform, so teams can act quickly and confidently, without second-guessing outdated files or chasing buried emails.
- Shared Data Thread: Procurement sees what FSQ sees. FSQ sees what sourcing sees. Everyone makes decisions based on the same continuous thread of live data.
- Partner Connectivity: A networked platform builds stronger brand-supplier relationships through transparency, alignment, and faster collaboration.
When teams work from the same system, it’s not just more efficient; it’s more strategic. Supplier decisions happen faster. Quality is prioritized earlier. And sourcing and safety become partners, not bottlenecks.
Hudsonville’s cross-team transformation
“The importance of that joint approach—as I’ve certainly seen in my past where purchasing and supply chain teams can be siloed in their thinking… TraceGains’ supplier approval process, the clear approved list and the setup, has [allowed] us to think very holistically.”
— Dustin Furney, Director of Supply Chain, Hudsonville Ice Cream
At Hudsonville, TraceGains didn’t just streamline compliance, it aligned their teams. With supply chain and FSQ collaborating on one shared platform, they’ve built a more connected, accountable, and agile approach to supplier management.
Barrier 5
The audit fire drill
Even the most experienced FSQ professionals dread audit season. It’s not because they aren’t prepared; it’s because finding proof of preparation often means scrambling through folders, cross-checking spreadsheets, and emailing colleagues to track down missing or expired documentation.
This is Barrier 5: The Audit Fire Drill—when teams shift into panic mode every time a customer, certifier, or regulatory agency knocks on the door. For many companies, audits are still treated as a sprint, not a standing state of readiness.
But food safety compliance shouldn’t hinge on last-minute heroics. And in a highly regulated, increasingly transparent market, it can’t afford to.
Break-through: Audits without the anxiety
With TraceGains Supplier Compliance, audit prep is no longer a reactive scramble, it’s baked into the way your team works every day. Documentation is always current, requests are tracked automatically, and records are organized and accessible in just a few clicks.
Here’s how teams eliminate audit chaos:
- Horizon Scanning Global: AI-powered insight flags ingredient-level risks across your global supply chain by mapping historical and emerging incident data—giving teams foresight, not fire drills.
- Auto-Captured Audit Trails: CARs and supplier responses are tracked and time-stamped in the platform, creating an automatic audit trail.
- Customizable Reports: Generate audit-ready reports in minutes, filtered by supplier, category, or compliance type.
This means you don’t need a heroic effort to pass an audit; you just need a system that doesn’t forget.
Hudsonville’s calm, controlled audit prep
“Audits used to feel like fire drills. Now, we’re confident going in because everything’s organized and accessible.”
— Maria White, Director of Food Safety and Quality, Hudsonville Ice Cream
Thanks to TraceGains, Hudsonville Ice Cream replaced panic with predictability. Their FSQ team enters audits with clear records, documented workflows, and the confidence that nothing’s been overlooked.
CONCLUSION
From reactive to ready: Turning compliance into confidence
Today’s food safety leaders know that compliance is more than a checkbox—it’s what keeps the wheels turning when supplier issues hit, regulations shift, or your next product launch hinges on speed and certainty. And that kind of confidence comes down to your ability to trust supplier data and prove performance when it matters most.
But trust doesn’t come from spreadsheets and good intentions. It comes from systems built for visibility, accountability, and scale.
TraceGains Supplier Compliance helps FSQ teams:
Eliminate manual document chaos
Streamline supplier engagement
Monitor risk in real time
Connect FSQ, supply chain, and R&D
Stay audit-ready, all the time
And as our data shows, the industry is shifting fast. With 82% of F&B professionals ranking digital modernization as a top priority, there’s never been a better time to move from fire drills to foresight.
Want to see it in action?
Watch the Supplier Compliance On-Demand Demo to see how TraceGains simplifies supplier workflows, improves performance, and helps F&B brands stay ahead of audits.