As the costs of goods rise and as the competitive landscape becomes more challenging, breweries are realizing more than ever that they can’t afford to be inefficient. From ingredient procurement to brewing processes to sales, good data that power smart decisions are paramount.
Yet when it comes to a tech stack that provides data and insight into their own operations, many breweries are still behind the eight ball. It’s not their fault: Aside from a few dedicated enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems, software for accounting, inventory, sales, and distribution channels generally haven’t been beer-focused or well-integrated.
“Breweries are criminally underserved by tech,” says Bill Kraich, vice president of ecommerce for Encompass Technologies, an ERP software firm based in Fort Collins, Colorado. “If you look at any brewery, they’ve got their tech stack and their tech spend, which is a finite amount. I think an outsized portion of that spend is going to data, not [to] technology that helps innovation or execution.”