How technology is serving to breweries deal with 2022’s most important challenges

Challenges abound in the brewing business currently — mounting rates and inflation, trouble sourcing raw supplies and elements, and an ongoing labor lack. Amid these difficulties, organization homeowners are striving to figure out how to manage their latest functions with small disruption. A single of the very best strategies to keep transferring forward is to locate techniques to do much more with less sources by adopting technological innovation and automating procedures. With the appropriate technologies in area, you can preserve time, enhance efficiencies, and get information more rapidly.

Ekos, a top small business management program for craft beverage businesses, is concentrated on encouraging breweries of all measurements use technologies to their finest benefit so they can improve, even in complicated times. With a in depth conclude-to-conclude application alternative, Ekos can help brewery entrepreneurs and administrators hook up details throughout the supply chain, offering insights on uncooked materials expenditures, manufacturing tendencies, accounting KPIs, and revenue metrics.

But of program, Ekos is just 1 section of the puzzle. With increased connectivity comes greater visibility. Ekos sees a several crucial areas of prospect for breweries who want to set themselves apart from the competitiveness and obtain methods to increase their businesses, regardless of the latest worries.

Go through more from Ekos underneath and be sure to stop by booth #2525 at the Craft Brewers Meeting to connect with the Ekos staff and get a demo.

Get visibility to beat supply chain worries

Provide chain troubles are leading of intellect for everybody. Whilst navigating ingredient shortages, skyrocketing charges, and ongoing supplier troubles, breweries have a person intention in head — keep manufacturing on monitor devoid of considerably impacting margins.

For fast paced breweries with high purchaser demand and a prolonged checklist of gross sales orders, manufacturing staff want to do the job as effectively as probable. Preferably, every single time you complete a batch, you are completely ready to get started the upcoming a single. But what occurs when you do not have the right components or packaging supplies on hand? You have to hold off your manufacturing timetable, which indicates misplaced revenue and disappointed shoppers, or you have to fork out expedited shipping and delivery to get the supplies you require sent as shortly as probable. On ordinary, breweries invest $250 more on every single expedited ingredient buy. And when the charge of elements and packaging are presently growing, that more cost can have a large effect on the bottom line.

Visibility is important to producing certain that you do not come across yourself in these sticky cases. If you use an stock administration software program like Ekos, you can see all of the inventory you have on hand, know when you are going to run out and set reorder points when you tumble beneath a particular threshold.

Outside of comprehending your accessible inventory, a enterprise management computer software can aid join the dots in all regions of the business enterprise. Jaclyn Smith from Monday Night time Brewing describes the great importance of possessing facts all in 1 position: “Having invest in orders, stock, gross sales, and accounting flowing as a result of one particular program can make Ekos like the center hub in a massive wheel — maintaining every little thing jointly — as our organization grows.”

Link stock, income & accounting info

Technological innovation can aid you work more competently, but what occurs when you have also several systems that really do not chat to each other? To get the insights you will need, you (or an individual on your staff) has to manually enter information in numerous spots. This not only requires time, but it also opens the door for facts entry glitches that could have big consequences on your business enterprise if you are relying on information and facts in these devices to make decisions.

The first move of connectivity is to commence with a organization administration software program, like Ekos, to serve as your program of document through which all details flows. Following, we advise that you connect two very important items of software package to this main program: POS/ecommerce methods and your accounting software package.

By connecting these a few methods, you can make improvements to visibility throughout your small business by routinely syncing each day income to deplete inventory and generating journal entries in your accounting technique. Brian Stephens of Iowa Brewing Firm claimed, “Previously, I expended so substantially time trying to make 3 items — stock, POS, and accounting — talk to each other, and it was a nightmare.” Now, instead of paying hours every single month reconciling gross sales from their POS method, his group can get a true-time watch of readily available stock and profits.

Ekos presently integrates with a few POS and ecommerce methods: Arryved, Sq., and Commerce7, with a lot more associates to occur later this calendar year. On the accounting facet, we know that 89% of breweries use QuickBooks (which integrates with Ekos), but we also assist Xero users.

Leverage analytics & company intelligence

We not too long ago introduced the 2022 edition of our Creating a Tech Stack Report. In this report, we analyzed the technological innovation that breweries and cideries are using to operate their organizations. This year’s report is in depth — we include every thing from QA/QC resources and ecommerce methods to program for running accounting or club/subscription plans.

The report highlights several approaches that breweries are applying program to function smarter, but we recognized one particular option that may possibly assistance your brewery stand out from the opposition: analytics and business enterprise intelligence (BI) software program. These electronic tools turn organization knowledge into understandable information that you can essentially act on. Our research observed that 27% of breweries aren’t using any kind of software for business enterprise intelligence and 62% are working with spreadsheets.

Large U.S. breweries were being the most probably to say they use some form of answer, no matter if
it is spreadsheets or BI software. Though the thought of “business intelligence” has not however turn out to be ingrained in the craft beverage sector, that doesn’t imply it isn’t significant. Understanding your organization within and out and remaining able to place that info to superior use is essential in these a competitive atmosphere.

A very good put to get started is working with reporting and dashboards in your organization administration software so that you can see vital metrics and start out to discover themes and places of enhancement. Monkless Brewing, a compact brewery in Bend, Oregon, has a related tech stack that permits the staff to extract insights at every single contact stage from grain to glass to make decisions that will direct to long term expansion. Proprietor Robin Clement stated, “Other breweries our dimension are most likely not rather as significantly together in that engineering realm as we are and not leveraging the tools totally the way that we do, which has been truly eye-opening. I just never see any other way to do it.”

Streamline income with a digital buy portal

Every revenue leader knows that time is income. The much more time product sales reps can expend making associations and conversing to prospects, the more dollars you can make. But of program, there is time-consuming admin operate, like inputting profits orders, that has to transpire driving the scenes . Soon after the client requests an purchase, profits reps want to document the purchase, examine that the inventory is obtainable, and agenda delivery. And, commonly, there’s some again-and-forth necessary to get the sales purchase verified.

A digital income buy portal enables customers to position orders them selves. Ekos Buy Hub is an on the net portal that is right related to Ekos, so when buyers spot an purchase, it routinely creates a sales purchase in Ekos and depletes inventory in genuine-time. It also streamlines the acceptance of product sales orders and retains all conversation about orders in a centralized spot. Paul DiMarco, stock supervisor at Adams Beverages reported, “Ekos Buy Hub is the most basic way to purchase in my present globe of products buying.”

Master additional about Ekos and get a demo at CBC booth #2525.