Top 4 Reasons why Distilleries need a Business Management platform

Summary: Today, India is the 3rd largest and fastest-growing alcoholic beverages market with a cumulative market cap of USD 5 billion. Research reveals that 30% of Indians consume alcohol and this figure has risen rapidly at a CAGR of 7% in the last four years. Therefore, several distilleries are trying to come up in this space and make a mark for themselves. However, it requires compliance with government policies and deploying a robust business management platform that provides solutions to various industry challenges quickly and efficiently.

Companies operating in the brewery and distillery industry have to deal with challenges across numerous verticals, including marketing & sales, finance & tax, production & quality, service management, warehouse & distribution, business intelligence & reporting, purchase & inventory, and contact management. In this article, we will see how business management platforms like Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) systems provide quick and efficient solutions to distillery companies.

1. Marketing & Sales

ERP software provides all the marketing and sales tools to track customer needs and stores all sales and marketing information in a single repository accessible to relevant stakeholders. Get an in-depth understanding of your customers’ preferences & changing market trends, succeed in online marketing, and benefit from mobile sales. 

• Grow customer base
  Business management platforms allow distillery companies to acquire and grow relevant prospects by executing top-notch lead generation, digital marketing activities, and campaigns.

1. Build and implement targeted marketing campaigns quickly.
2. Get actionable insights to enhance your lead conversion rate.
3. Track how your customers are responding to online and offline campaigns and reinvent strategies accordingly.
4. Build pioneering digital marketing programs that ensure excellent word-of-mouth.
5. Get more efficient tools to measure the impact of your digital marketing campaigns.

>>> Also Read: ERP for Alcohol & Distilleries Industry <<<

• Salesforce automation
  

  Enhance your sales teams’ ability to find prospects with a higher chance of converting into full-time paying customers. A robust business management platform will allow them to search and close more leads by significantly increasing their productivity, both, in-house and in the field.

1. 1. Access inventory, sales history, quotes, customer feedback, schedule, and much more on your mobile device.
   2. Get comprehensive information about your customers, prospect, vendors, suppliers, and distributors.
   3. Provide discounts, perform profit and loss budgeting, and assign equipment instantly.
   4. Automate competition and market analysis 

• Mobile Sales
  

  Significantly increase the agility and productivity of your sales reps by allowing them to access critical business information across various mobile devices, including smartphones, laptops, PCs, tablets, etc.

1. 1. Check inventory, prices, and much more instantly.
   2. Dramatically reduce preparation time for visits. 
   3. Speed up the invoicing process by sending invoices to the customer instantly.
   4. Software is compatible with all platforms, including android, windows, and iOS. 

• Loyalty Management
  

  Business management platforms create and manage loyalty management programs that help develop robust and long-lasting customer relationships.

1. 1. Efficiently manage the earning and withdrawal of loyalty points.
   2. Collect donations and base points on sales.
   3. Allow customers to use loyalty points easily.

• Email marketing
  

  Business management platforms enable distillery companies to market and promote their products on electronic media, create engaging email marketing campaigns, and do A/B testing that helps understand what strategies are working.

1. 1. Simplify surveys and create targeted email campaigns.
   2. Automate email marketing activities, thereby enabling the sales team to focus on mission-critical tasks.
   3. Nurture prospects across each stage to ensure they are sales-ready.
   4. Track how leads are engaging with your email marketing campaigns — what they are primarily engaging with and responding to.

• Event management

  Distillery companies get a 360-degree overview of events-related orders, such as products sold in a giveaway or an event. You can also optimize equipment with the rise in demands and plan equipment loans with your orders.

1. 1. Interactive workflow management
   2. Lend chairs, tables, and daft installations efficiently.
   3. Manage everything from customer request and shipment to returning goods, and much more. 

• Tele sales

  Increase customer database efficiently by the tele sales module.

1. 1. Use predefined delivery routes to minimize distribution costs.
   2. Create predefined calling plans.
   3. Create new up-selling and cross-selling opportunities through volume discount rewards.
   4. Access historical accounts, discount alerts, and promotions. 

2. Finance & Tax

Indian distillery market is setting up the global footprints. Recently, in an article published by Businesses World, IWSC Picks Indian Gin Distillery In World’s Top 5 Gin Producers. While Indian companies aim at entering the international markets, managing finance and compliances becomes an integral part of business operation.

Business management platforms consist of tools that enable distillery companies to integrate financial management workflow with other departments. This system helps bring together financial processes & analytics, controls costs, liquidity, and cash, performs automated and real-time processes, and helps get relevant business insights.

• Finance management and accounting
  

  Manage accounts payables and receivables, general ledgers, budgets, and access detailed financial reports with a business management platform.

1. 1. Manage fixed and variable costs effectively.
   2. Maximize cash and drive efficiency with integrated accounts and payable capabilities.
   3. Create detailed reports on profits, inventory costs, sales, and sales costs.
   4. Get multi-currency and multi-language support and inter-company transfers.

>>> Also Read: ERP for Financial Services <<<

• Discount management

Discount management plays an essential role in a distillery company’s supply chain management:

1. 1. Consists of sales and purchase modules.
   2. Manage multiple discount and promotion accounts simultaneously.
   3. Efficiently manage free items.
   4. Get volume-based periodic rebates.

• Deposit management
  

  Manage deposits efficiently without getting into complicated administrative procedures.

1. 1. Automate separate invoices for goods.
   2. Calculate deposit limit and send automatic warnings.
   3. Check goods that are returned by customers.
   4. Easily integrate with sales, inventory, and purchase workflows.

• Duty Management
  

  Distilleries businesses no longer have to calculate taxes separately for each item. Instead, you can calculate item-category taxes like excise duty based on a particular country’s legislation.

1. 1. Handle multiple taxes based on various geographies.
   2. Report taxes quickly and efficiently.
   3. Compute eco-taxes easily.
   4. Manage country-specific tax regulations without any delay.
   5. Manage crucial ERP modules, including sales, IT, purchase, warehouse, inventory, all from one place. 

• Contract management
  

  Quickly build reports and contracts for short-term and long-term requirements, including loan, rent, and technical maintenance contracts.

1. 1. Get a complete overview of commitments and discounts.
   2. Get a 360-degree picture of volume commitments.
   3. Looks after building management (the pub owned by the distilleries company or a third-party vendor).
   4. Check the entire budget easily. 

3. Warehouse & distribution

Efficient management of warehouses and distribution centers plays an essential role in developing a cohesive supply chain. Business management platforms like ERP software allow distillery companies to streamline warehouse and distribution-related challenges that increase warehouse efficiency, manage discounts, and deliver top-notch customer service. 

>>> Also Read: ERP for Alcohol & Distilleries Industry <<<

• Transportation management
  

  Move products from source to destination cost-effectively. Optimize customer service, reduce freight cost, and significantly increase your warehouse efficiency with ERP application.

1. 1. Pre-set delivery routes
   2. Allocate trucks and drivers with the click-of-a-button
   3. Manage third-party vendors, suppliers, and distributors
   4. Check and analyze constraints on volume, weight, and delivery date

• Integrated Scanning

Streamline warehouse workflow using state-of-the-art Serial Shipping Container Code (SSCC) pallet tracking, enhance visibility across various interconnected logistics operations, and reduce/eliminate data entry errors.

1. 1. Join and split pallets through the scanner.
   2. Manage returned orders efficiently.
   3. Assign and distribute warehouse tasks quickly between the team members.
   4. Stock corrections at the pallet or lot level.
   5. Register finished products and raw materials faster and smarter.
   6. Check the authenticity and correctness of shipments and purchase receipts.

4. Quality management

Business management platforms help distillery companies manage raw material costs and complicated customer demands and adhere to strict government rules and regulations concerning food and beverage safety and quality concerns. In addition, this software will enable you to significantly increase your operational visibility, flexibility, and reliability and become more agile to handle orders. 

>>> Also Read: Efficient Quality Management in Sage X3 <<<

• Traceability
  

  ERP software for distillery companies will allow you to track items from source to destination. You can control expiration dates and smoothen planning, purchasing, and quality assurance. Other features of the tracking module include:

1. 1. Label management
   2. Registration of laboratory quality requirements

• Beverage production
  

  Drive efficiency by tracking business operations from purchasing raw materials to end-product packaging.

1. 1. Automate critical operations like capacity planning and production order management.
   2. Automate lot traceability of intermediate, finished, and raw materials.
   3. Automate macro planning solutions for production plans and purchase contracts. 

• Planning
  

  Streamline logistics and procurement policies via distilleries ERP. Formulate plans regarding what products you will produce on which product lines and use forecasting tools to develop short-term and long-term planning. This way, you can ensure that you are never short of the raw materials required to run your distilleries company.

1. 1. Automate lot management
   2. Automatically generate bar codes
   3. Get full traceability
   4. Optimize inventory value 
   5. Automate inventory processes

• Quality management
  

  ERP for distillery management allows you to measure product quality based on intermediate and finished goods in the production process. Moreover, it also monitors the quality of the raw materials. Other functions of the ERP software include:

1. 1. Automatically block operations if bad results come up
   2. Backward and forward tracking
   3. Performs automatic ad hoc and in-process tests
   4. Top-notch quality reporting features

• Manufacturing execution system (MES)
  

  Distilleries ERP simplifies the monitoring of your beverage production processes. It tracks all the processes that lead to the conversion of raw materials into finished products. You will also get the following benefits:

1. 1. Monitor losses incurred in the entire value chain from raw materials to finished products by tracking the material flow.
   2. Compare product parameters with specifications through parameter monitoring features.
   3. Integrate with other industrial hardware systems like matrix lasers, controllers, cameras, bar code scanners, and much more. 
   4. Analyze production performance quickly

• Plant maintenance management
  

  Efficiently manage beverage production equipment, ad-hoc service requests, preventative maintenance, and easy handling of plant maintenance.

1. 1. Generate reports for spare parts.
   2. Capture maintenance information quickly and efficiently.
   3. Log spare parts automatically.