The Craft Portal will allow you see your beer manufacturing in new, simplified, headache-free ways.
Mega breweries are experts at streamlining their businesses. They have teams dedicated to analyzing data and statistics to organize and simplify information, forecast and make buying and business decisions. Most craft breweries struggle with this sort of data analytics. Most small brewhouses would kill for a material requirements planning (MRP) system geared toward small breweries — a production planning, scheduling and inventory control system used to manage manufacturing processes. Most MRP systems are software-based, but they often cost too much for small businesses. Well, they used to.
“We first began discussing this product years ago when we realized our software as a service was too expensive for many of the breweries we wanted to work with. The cost of business for us was just too high,” explained Adrian Belobradic, sales director at GP Analytics. “Soon thereafter, three of our partners were purchased by Anheuser-Busch InBev, and they implemented our enterprise level tools, CraftedMRP, into all their newly acquired breweries. During the two years working in this environment, we were able to develop the systems we dreamed about. Now after parting ways with AB InBev, we’re excited to get back to our roots and help independent breweries reach their goals.”
GP Analytics is an analytics and software technology company focused on supporting craft breweries and distributors via MRP programming and consulting. The company’s technology program, Crafted MRP, was developed out of brewers’ and wholesalers’ needs to better forecast, produce and manage the flow of product from source to consumer. Now, GP Analytics has announced a new set of tools called The Craft Portal. At its core, it’s a secure online ordering portal for collaboration between breweries and their wholesaler partners. It offers exportable reports that can be uploaded to your accounting software, a 12-week forecast tool for better production planning and a number of other options.
“We want to give the same power and capabilities that the large mega breweries enjoy with a tool 100 percent specific to the challenges of the craft brewing business,” said Belobradic. “Because we developed all the tools ourselves and do not license any of our technology, we can offer The Craft Portal starting at $99 per month with the first three months free.”
Sounds like a deal. What does this service entail exactly? Here are some highlights:
- Take charge of your logistics, sales and operations to gather the critical information for running your brewery. Exportable sales reports, formatted to load into most ERP systems.
- Automated email reminders for your wholesalers to drive engagement. Multiple suppliers on the Craft Portal ensures daily or weekly views are paramount to your wholesalers.
- The 12-week wholesaler forecast tool ensures engagement by your distributor partners, helps you calculate demand and gives your wholesalers confidence.
- Easily manage core, seasonal and experimental products. Settings allow you to turn ON or OFF quickly and manage inventory levels at the brewery.
The Craft Portal is also easily customizable for almost any craft business:
- Easy setup
- Connects with most ERP systems
- Compatable with VIP sales data
- Calculates wholesaler/velocity and day of inventory
- Creates purchase orders
- Drag and drop features
- Balances loads by weight and unit
- Rolling 12-week forecast
“The additional modules we offer can link to your VIP, add additional warehouses to your portal and create allocations for specialty brands,” said Belobradic. “We initially developed it for Goose Island, Bourbon County Stout, and our Brand Rights tool even allows you to turn items on or off by wholesaler.”
Three months free? $99 a month for starters? This is an easy and affordable way to dabble in analyzing your beer making, selling and forecasting processes.
