How technologies is aiding breweries tackle 2022’s major difficulties

Challenges abound in the brewing industry these days — rising prices and inflation, difficulty sourcing raw resources and substances, and an ongoing labor scarcity. Amid these issues, business homeowners are attempting to figure out how to keep their present-day functions with nominal disruption. One particular of the ideal methods to preserve shifting forward is to discover techniques to do a lot more with less sources by adopting technological innovation and automating procedures. With the ideal technologies in location, you can preserve time, strengthen efficiencies, and get data a lot quicker.

Ekos, a best organization management application for craft beverage corporations, is centered on encouraging breweries of all sizes use engineering to their most effective edge so they can mature, even in complicated situations. With a in depth finish-to-conclude software program remedy, Ekos assists brewery entrepreneurs and managers hook up data throughout the source chain, giving insights on uncooked product expenses, production tendencies, accounting KPIs, and product sales metrics.

But of course, Ekos is just 1 part of the puzzle. With bigger connectivity comes bigger visibility. Ekos sees a handful of vital places of chance for breweries who want to established by themselves aside from the opposition and uncover methods to expand their enterprises, irrespective of the latest challenges.

Read extra from Ekos beneath and be guaranteed to prevent by booth #2525 at the Craft Brewers Meeting to connect with the Ekos staff and get a demo.

Get visibility to beat offer chain issues

Offer chain problems are best of intellect for absolutely everyone. Even though navigating ingredient shortages, skyrocketing rates, and ongoing provider problems, breweries have a single aim in intellect — hold production on observe without the need of drastically impacting margins.

For occupied breweries with higher consumer need and a prolonged list of profits orders, output personnel want to work as efficiently as doable. Preferably, every single time you finish a batch, you are completely ready to begin the following a person. But what comes about when you do not have the proper components or packaging supplies on hand? You have to hold off your generation timetable, which means dropped revenue and not happy customers, or you have to shell out expedited shipping and delivery to get the supplies you need to have delivered as shortly as possible. On ordinary, breweries devote $250 added on just about every expedited component buy. And when the value of ingredients and packaging are presently mounting, that added price tag can have a big influence on the bottom line.

Visibility is essential to producing confident that you really do not uncover on your own in these sticky conditions. If you use an stock management program like Ekos, you can see all of the inventory you have on hand, know when you are likely to operate out and set reorder factors when you tumble under a specified threshold.

Outside of comprehension your out there stock, a business administration software can support link the dots in all parts of the business. Jaclyn Smith from Monday Evening Brewing describes the great importance of having info all in just one area: “Having order orders, stock, profits, and accounting flowing as a result of a single process can make Ekos like the middle hub in a big wheel — keeping all the things alongside one another — as our organization grows.”

Hook up stock, product sales & accounting details

Technological know-how can assist you work additional competently, but what comes about when you have as well many systems that don’t chat to each other? To get the insights you will need, you (or a person on your team) has to manually enter knowledge in various locations. This not only requires time, but it also opens the door for info entry errors that could have huge effects on your company if you are relying on details in these methods to make decisions.

The very first action of connectivity is to begin with a organization management software program, like Ekos, to provide as your method of document through which all details flows. Up coming, we suggest that you link two important parts of application to this core technique: POS/ecommerce units and your accounting software package.

By connecting these a few devices, you can boost visibility across your company by mechanically syncing everyday gross sales to deplete stock and generating journal entries in your accounting process. Brian Stephens of Iowa Brewing Corporation explained, “Previously, I expended so a lot time attempting to make 3 matters — stock, POS, and accounting — communicate to each individual other, and it was a nightmare.” Now, as an alternative of investing hrs each individual month reconciling sales from their POS system, his crew can get a actual-time see of out there inventory and income.

Ekos at present integrates with 3 POS and ecommerce methods: Arryved, Square, and Commerce7, with more companions to arrive later this year. On the accounting side, we know that 89% of breweries use QuickBooks (which integrates with Ekos), but we also assistance Xero people.

Leverage analytics & organization intelligence

We not long ago produced the 2022 model of our Constructing a Tech Stack Report. In this report, we analyzed the engineering that breweries and cideries are applying to operate their organizations. This year’s report is thorough — we cover all the things from QA/QC equipment and ecommerce programs to computer software for handling accounting or club/subscription systems.

The report highlights numerous techniques that breweries are employing software package to operate smarter, but we determined 1 chance that could assist your brewery stand out from the level of competition: analytics and business intelligence (BI) application. These electronic resources turn small business information into comprehensible information and facts that you can really act on. Our investigate observed that 27% of breweries aren’t making use of any kind of software package for company intelligence and 62% are employing spreadsheets.

Huge U.S. breweries were being the most most likely to say they use some form of solution, regardless of whether
it’s spreadsheets or BI software package. Although the concept of “business intelligence” has not nonetheless come to be ingrained in the craft beverage marketplace, that doesn’t signify it is not critical. Figuring out your organization inside and out and being equipped to place that data to fantastic use is crucial in this sort of a aggressive natural environment.

A very good area to commence is making use of reporting and dashboards in your enterprise management software package so that you can see important metrics and commence to discover themes and areas of improvement. Monkless Brewing, a little brewery in Bend, Oregon, has a related tech stack that enables the group to extract insights at every single touch position from grain to glass to make choices that will lead to foreseeable future progress. Owner Robin Clement reported, “Other breweries our size are very likely not fairly as far along in that technological innovation realm as we are and not leveraging the equipment entirely the way that we do, which has been really eye-opening. I just really don’t see any other way to do it.”

Streamline income with a digital buy portal

Each individual profits chief is aware that time is revenue. The additional time sales reps can spend building interactions and talking to shoppers, the additional money you can make. But of course, there is time-consuming admin operate, like inputting income orders, that has to happen powering the scenes . Soon after the customer requests an buy, gross sales reps will need to doc the get, test that the stock is offered, and routine shipping. And, usually, there’s some again-and-forth expected to get the sales get verified.

A electronic sales get portal will allow consumers to position orders on their own. Ekos Buy Hub is an on the internet portal that is straight linked to Ekos, so when shoppers position an order, it instantly produces a sales get in Ekos and depletes inventory in real-time. It also streamlines the approval of sales orders and retains all communication about orders in a centralized locale. Paul DiMarco, stock supervisor at Adams Beverages explained, “Ekos Order Hub is the simplest way to order in my present globe of product or service obtaining.”

Study much more about Ekos and get a demo at CBC booth #2525.