Your background is in quality and compliance – how has that informed your work in the animal welfare space?

There's always been a lot of crossover between the two. Yes, I started in quality and compliance, but I was always involved in the agri side of things also, due to the small team size on site. I was involved in discussions with vets pretty much on daily basis, coming onto site and with animal welfare officer training. I did a lot of internal audits on the quality and compliance side of things. Plus, my technical manager was excellent at identifying areas she thought I would thrive, so she threw me into things. Very quickly I was sitting in on animal welfare audits and then I was leading them. I was involved in daily discussions with vets, reviewing food chain information, monitoring tracebility back to farm, and reviewing technical and welfare standards to ensure compliance. I did internal audits on the quality and compliance side of things. Plus, my technical manager was excellent at identifying areas she thought I would thrive, so she threw me into things. Very quickly I was sitting in on both technical and animal welfare audits and then I was leading some of them. I enjoyed the structure and when you start to get your confidence, you realise it’s all a similar process, whether that takes the form of technical or welfare standards. Working with the agri people and the farmers, you could sometimes see progress faster, which was always rewarding. Then when I started at Foods Connected, I started in food compliance, but very quickly moved over to support the agricultural team. In fact, one of my first jobs was to help with antibiotic usage reporting. This then led to standards benchmarking. My current work is made so much easier having sat on the other side of audits, knowing the challenges that suppliers can face, and having a worked in the slaughter environment. It is always easier to understand processes when you can visualise them, or understand the meaning of a document when you see it in use.

So, why the food sector?

Well, I wanted to do something I enjoyed and followed my heart. It started with Home Economics being one of my favourite subjects at school, and hence a food degree, but I didn't know what I was going to do with this in the long term. After completing my placement in the food industry, I found I enjoyed the environment and had an interest in supply chains as a whole. Then when I graduated, I looked at industry again and started applying for jobs. My first job was working for a pork manufacturer in Ballymena. I didn't really know what I was getting myself in for, but I found it really interesting. I'm the type of person who likes to know why and how things happen. I like to know a process, so I can make sense of the bigger picture. The pork sector was a good starting point for me. The technical work there was a crossover between technical quality, technical and agri elements which opened the door for everything that was to come. During my time here, I found the animal welfare aspects really interested me, so when I joined Foods Connected and had the chance to work within the Animal Welfare, Compliance and Environmental team, I jumped at it. I find it rewarding looking at the full supply chain back to farm and being part of the bigger picture of driving positive changes in the sector, supporting and guiding others, seeing improvements and highlighting challenges. Prior to Foods Connected, my experience was very much limited to the world of the pork industry, however I now have a good grasp of supply chains and processes across multiple species, such as red meat, poultry and aquaculture.

What are you most proud of in your career so far?

Good question. I think in some ways it's not necessarily a tangible thing, but it's the amount I have learnt in quite a short space of time. I would always have doubted myself and my ability, but working both in industry and at Foods Connected has helped me find my voice. I'm naturally more of an introvert. I can get on with people socially, but I'm happy in my own company. The same when I moved to Foods Connected. We have a great team and they have been keen to share knowledge and help me grow. The more you learn, the more you start to believe in your own abilities and have confidence in your suggestions. Now I'm leading on calls with customers and stakeholders. If I look back four years, I wouldn't have had the confidence or the knowledge to do that. The growth in my knowledge and confidence is therefore one of the things I’m most proud about. At the end of June, I’ll be doing lead auditor training - something I could never have imagined myself capable of doing in the past. The fact that the people I work with are saying “this is the next step for you – you are a specialist in your field” - That's a massive thing for me.

Supply Chain Management Specifications & NPD Company News

A step-by-step guide to the new Supplier Manager app

By Bethany Patterson 26/06/2026

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Foods Connected Product Owner Bethany Patterson walks you through the new Supplier Manager — what's changed, what's faster, and what to expect when you log in.

I started as a graduate at Foods Connected nearly ten years ago progressing to Senior Implementation Manager – and today I’m the Product Owner for Supplier Approval & Compliance. So, as you can imagine, during my time in the business I’ve spent a lot of time on the platform.

My subject matter expertise has been invaluable while I’ve been working on the modernisation project. Talking to our customers I was able to pin point exactly what they needed from the beginning – and was genuinely excited about being part of the team bringing it to life.

Now that the Beta is live, I wanted to share what the new experience actually looks like from the inside.

Your new starting point: Connected Start

The first thing you'll notice after logging in is a banner running across the top of your legacy homepage. Click Preview the new experience and it takes you straight through to Connected Start — our redesigned dashboard and the home base for everything you do on the platform.

What I love about Connected Start is that it was built around how people actually work. Rather than a generic landing page, you land on a dashboard showing your most used applications, the latest platform updates, and your open tasks – all in one place.

The Pin to Apps section is where it gets personal. You choose which applications appear on your dashboard and drag them into whatever order makes sense for your role. No two people's dashboards need to look the same. If you want to explore beyond your pinned apps, you can open the full apps directory, search by name, browse what's available, and pin anything you want from there.

Tasks are front and centre too. The banner at the top of the page gives you a live count of your open tasks, with your top five visible at a glance. Click through and you'll see everything assigned to you across every application — filterable by creator, date or assignee. It's a simple thing, but having that single view of your workload, across all your apps, makes a real difference to your day.

And if you ever need to step back to the classic app, you can do that at any time. Your data, workflows, and settings stay exactly as they are – nothing changes when you toggle between the two versions.

Into the new Supplier Manager

Supplier Manager is our most widely used application, so it was the natural starting point for the modernisation project. The new experience has been rebuilt from the ground up with speed and usability at the forefront – and that came directly from listening to customers during our pilot phase.

Speed was the number one piece of feedback we heard. The new Supplier Manager is noticeably faster, and users in our pilot consistently called it out as one of the most significant improvements. When you're working through supplier profiles, tasks, and compliance actions every day, that performance difference adds up.

The interface itself is cleaner and more intuitive. Supplier information is easier to navigate, search is more responsive, and the actions you need to take are surfaced more clearly. Whether you're reviewing a supplier profile, working through compliance tasks, or checking in on actions across your supply base, the new experience is designed to get you where you need to go faster.

The Knowledge Base

Alongside the new Supplier Manager, we've also launched Knowledge Base – a built-in resource designed to support you as you find your feet in the new experience. You don't need to open a separate website or leave the platform to get help. The Knowledge Base is right there when you need it, with articles and guidance covering exactly what you're working on. It's the fastest way to find an answer and keep moving.

What's next

The new Supplier Manager is the first step in a wider modernisation project that will continue throughout 2026. More apps are being updated, and the same principles – speed, simplicity, and building around what users actually need – will carry through all of them.

If you haven't tried the new experience yet, I'd encourage you to click that banner and take a look. And as always, if you have feedback, we want to hear it. This project has been shaped by our customers from the start, and that's not changing.

Want to see the new Supplier Manager in action? Watch our on-demand webinar below or head to Connected Start here.

Bethany Patterson

Bethany is a supply chain specialist. She began her career at Foods Connected as a Business Graduate before progressing through roles in the implementation team to the position of Product Owner.