Progress 09/01/19 to 08/31/22

Outputs
Target Audience:Our proposal was to indentify our target audience through a series of surveys, beginning with a broad approach and narrowing to specific segments with inthe food and beverage manufacturing industry. However, as our project was initiated at the begining of the COVID-19 pandemic we had to rethink our inital proposal to determine whether it remained relevant with the new landscape. After revising our initial surveys, we determined that our new focus of interest was on fullfilling the needs of small businesses for their regulatory and legal needs associated with exporting and importing food ingredients and products. Changes/Problems:As COVID-19 continues in our communities we have continued to shift our focus to online solutions. No longer is it possible under our proposed business model to effectively offer in-person trainings as many communities do not allow them and the ones that do have reported limited attendance. As such, we continue to refocus our efforts on identifying and developing online solutions to meet the new COVID-19 landscape. Additionally, we have refocused our efforts on importing and exporting legal and regulatory needs as this has become a major problem in the current post-COVID landscape where supply chain issues continue to plague the economy. What opportunities for training and professional development has the project provided? Nothing Reported How have the results been disseminated to communities of interest? Nothing Reported What do you plan to do during the next reporting period to accomplish the goals? Nothing Reported

Impacts
What was accomplished under these goals? Technical Objective 1: We continued to build on our success from the previous reporting period and have completed the migration to our new platform. We tested and continue to refine the platform and website to meet the demands of our goals and customers. Technical Objective 2: We have identified and developed many new services and products to our offerings. These new offerings were incorporated into the platform. We also created processes and procedures for our internal team to streamline the customer experience and ensure uniform responses to frequently asked questions and to process orders. Technical Objective 3: We have identified new potential areas for expansion, specifically services for food businesses looking to export their products to international markets and domestic food businesses seeking to import ingredients and/or products into the United States. Technical Objective 4: We continue to explore potential customers and partnerships, including partnering with technology firms to license our content to use on their platforms.

Publications

Progress 09/01/20 to 08/31/21

Outputs
Target Audience:During this reporting period we continued discussions with an identifed potential audience that we initiated discussions with during the previous reporting period. TheSouthern United States Trade Association (SUSTA) reached out to us and inquired about developing a custom-developedExport-Readiness Training and Curriculum program (ERT) using our on-demand learning platform. SUSTA's ERT program isintended to provide small and mid-size companies located in the southern US member states an opportunity to evaluate their capacity for exporting and to teach the fundamentals of exporting to these companies. SUSTA issued an RFP in regards to this need and we drafted and submitted a proposal in response. Due to COVID-19, the request for proposals was reissued and we were required to amend our initial proposal to meet their new requirements.Unfortunately, we were not selected as the vendor to provide them services. We have continued our search for other potential partners during this reporting period. Changes/Problems:As COVID-19 continues in our communities we have continued to shift our focus to online solutions. No longer is it possible under our proposed business model to effectively offer in-person trainings as many communities do not allow them and the ones that do have reported limited attendance. As such, we continue to refocus our efforts on identifying and developing online solutions to meet the new COVID-19 landscape. What opportunities for training and professional development has the project provided? Nothing Reported How have the results been disseminated to communities of interest? Nothing Reported What do you plan to do during the next reporting period to accomplish the goals?We plan to continue on our proposed work to complete the objectives we have yet to address during the last reporting period. Specifically, we intend to continue to develop new products and their associated processes and procedures. We also will continueto conduct customerdiscovery in order to determine which areas to target for further expansion. Lastly, we will continue toconduct customer discovery for potential markets. As we have had to adapt due to COVID-19, we will continue to leverage our experiencewith online solutions to meet consumer demand. We believe that this online option will create significant opportunities for our business model and research.

Impacts
What was accomplished under these goals? Technical Objective 1: We continued to build on our success from the previous reporting period to migrate to our new platform. We tested and refined the platform and website to meet the demands of our goals and customers. Technical Objective 2: We have identified and developed many new services and products to our offerings. These new offerings were incorporated into the platform. We also created processes and procedures for our internal team to streamline the customer experience and ensure uniform responses to frequently asked questions and to process orders. Technical Objective 3: We continued to explore new potential areas for expansion, including services for food businesses looking to export their products to international markets.

Publications

Progress 09/01/19 to 08/31/20

Outputs
Target Audience:During this reporting period we have identifed a potential audience that could benefit from our proposed project. The Southern United States Trade Association (SUSTA) reached out to us and inquired about developinga custom-developed Export-Readiness Training and Curriculum program (ERT)using our on-demand learning platform. SUSTA's ERT program is intended to provide small and mid-size companies located in the southern US member states an opportunity to evaluate their capacity for exporting and to teach the fundamentals of exporting to these companies.SUSTA issued an RFP in regards to this need and we drafted and submitted a proposal in response. Due to COVID-19, thecontract award has been delayed and we have not received a final determination. Changes/Problems:The first issue we encountered was the delayed receipt of initial funding. We were scheduled to receive the initial funds on or about September 1, 2019, and had planned for such receipt, but we did not receive funding until late February 2020. This six month delay toour timelinecaused loss of a potential business relationship with the University of Arkansas since they had scheduled our business into their work plan. The delayed funding also required us to release some personnel hired to perform portions of the Phase II work.The funding delay and consequences thereof considerably slowed down our proposed project timeline. Additionally, just days after receiving the initial funding,the Worth Health Organization determined that a novel coronavirus (COVID-19) could be characterized as a global pandemic.Two days later, the White House declared the COVID-19 outbreak in the U.S. a national emergency.Shortly thereafter, numerous states declared local emergencies, requiring many businesses (including restaurants) to cease operations and ordering most people to shelter-in-place. The global demand for food products shifted nearly overnight, as restaurants shuttered, export markets closed, and demand for packaged, shelf-stable goods skyrocketed. All of these events occurring virtually simultaneously caused enormous supply chain disruption for food companies of every kind, and required food companies to go into crisis mode. Also in March 2020, during the supply-chain crisis caused by the COVID-19 outbreak, the final remaining compliance date for the Food Safety Modernization Act's Foreign Supplier Verification Act ("FSVP") took effect. This meant that every food company importing food and food products into the United States was required to comply with the new and onerous requirements of the FSVP.In essence, the FSVP requires importers to confirm that products and raw agricultural products they import into the U.S. comply with U.S. food safety laws. The means by which importers must verify these "foreign suppliers" andeach importing entity must have a "qualified individual" develop the FSVP plan and have a FSVP Agent physically located in the U.S. The FSVP requirements are of critical importance to rural food companies, which are often small businesses and are at a higher risk of failing to comply with a FSMA rule than mid-sized and large importers and producers.In short, rural firms and farms are in imminent need of assistance with FSVP requirements. In light of such events, we have expanded the scope of our work in response to the global COVID-19 pandemic. The pandemic, a national emergency declaration, and varying state shelter-in-place/essential business orders have had tremendous, widespread, and varying impacts on the food and agriculture industry. States and federal regulators have implemented emergency enforcement procedures. Virtually overnight, food companies have had to alter production plans, change suppliers, amend supply chain plans and procedures, comply with new laws, and institute increased sanitization and employee hygiene protocols. Because our business exists exclusively to support the food industry, to meet our customers' needswe expanded the scope of the services. While our customers still need to understand the general laws governing the industry, they also need additional assistance understanding the evolving supply chain-related laws and regulations, and laws impacted by the COVID-19 outbreak. We will continue our efforts to explore potential opportunities toassist rural firms and farms with these new and evolving laws and regulations. What opportunities for training and professional development has the project provided? Nothing Reported How have the results been disseminated to communities of interest? Nothing Reported What do you plan to do during the next reporting period to accomplish the goals?We plan to continue on our proposed work to complete the objectives we have yet to address during the first reporting period. Specifically, we intend to continue to develop the topics we identified in Objective 2 into full courses. We also will continue toconduct customer discovery in order todetermine which states to target for further expansion. Lastly, we will continue to conduct customer discovery for potential markets, such as state department of agriculture. We will leverage our experience and proposal business model to offer online trainings for those communities that require social distancing as a result of COVID-19. We believe that this online option will create significant opportunities for our business model and research.

Impacts
What was accomplished under these goals? Technical Objective 1: Move to a fully-dedicated learning management system (LMS). For this transition we worked on identifying the learner personas, business goals, engagement strategy, learning objectives, and how to measure the learner success. We have worked on designing and building the LMS, including configuring the backend to meet the requirements of our system and usability with other potential users. We have also worked on incorporating thetechnical attributes based on the feedback from the Phase I panel review, some of which includes adding certificates of completion, allowing posting of comments/questions, evaluation tools (i.e., quizzes), into our existing courses. We have also worked with our course designers to identify the technical attributes and course requirements. Technical Objective 2: Increase the topics offered in the pilot states Michigan and Louisiana. We have conducted further customer discovery to identify topics for additional courses. As a result of this discovery process, we have identified several topics and we are in the course development stages for these topics.We thenresearched the applicable laws and regulations for each topic using online databases.From this research we designed scripts and supplement templates for each lesson using the format created in Technical Objective 1. We then reviewed the script to identify media requirements and materials to include in the course, such as pictures/images, video clips, logos, example product labels, etc. We than recorded each lesson and incorporated visual materials into the video.

Publications