Doozy Solutions partnered with Beerfarm, a rising star in the Australian craft beer scene, to implement the industry-leading solution Crafted ERP across its sales, accounting, inventory and warehouse management, beer production, compliance and quality control functions.

The Customer

“From smashable lagers your mum and dad would drink to complex IPAs and sours packed full of rescued fruit supporting Aussie farmers,” the growing team at Beerfarm is dedicated to producing a unique range of craft beers and ciders with a focus on sustainability, accountability and respect for the land upon which they live.

Having grown quickly to reach  a pivotal production volume of more than 1 million litres in the 2020 financial year, Beerfarm was planning on improving its core business management processes in order to support leadership goals of rapid growth, distribution area expansion, increasing DTC sales and streamlining an increasingly complex production process.

Beerfarm was relying on a myriad of siloed systems including Xero, EKOS and Microsoft Excel to manage its day-to-day operations, financial management and production planning. Having started to see the strain this approach was putting on their team, it sought to find a more comprehensive solution to provide a platform for growth, and reduce the complexity of administration, data aggregation and reporting for their leaders and the wider organization.

The Challenges

Like many growing breweries, the team at Beerfarm was facing a situation in which despite their best efforts, confidence in its data and reporting – as well as the time it took to aggregate data from different systems – led to delayed and inaccurate reporting.

In addition to this, the company's desire to maintain tight control over the product quality was somewhat stunted by the disparate nature of its quality control processes.

As production ramped up, Beerfarm's ability to quickly and easily manage demand and supply planning was strained, which meant their inventory management teams struggled to keep up with the increased complexity of warehouse operations.

Production costing was also an area they wished to make more accurate. Until they implemented Crafted ERP, they were using Google Sheets to provide estimated and averaged cost of production and delivery, which Beerfarm Chief Operations & Sustainability Officer Deejay Parker told us was, “very estimated and a best guess."

The Goals

• Get access to accurate costing data
• Have better control over scheduling and production
• Achieve real time reporting and have confidence in the data outputs
• Increase scalability

The Outcomes

Having successfully implemented Crafted ERP in less than 100 days, Beerfarm was eager to start reaping the benefits of the collective efforts of its project team and Doozy’s local Australian implementation team in Australia. Since go-live, Beer farm has experienced the following outcomes:

Improved Quality Control

Beerfarm now has the ability to access detailed reporting across batches and SKUs, allowing a level of traceability not previously possible. Identifying trends is also simplified, which makes decision making easier now that they have confidence in the accuracy of the information. By personalizing Crafted ERP’s native brew log forms, the team has gained detailed analytics about their production performance.

Increased Accuracy of Data Entry

Before Crafted ERP was implemented, Beerfarm’s brewers were entering their brew logs into EKOS, but there was no management method to extract the data in a useful manner, not to mention the laborious process suffered when trying to aggregate information across different systems. With Crafted, the information is entered directly into a single system, which means they are able to easily spot trends and variations in real time and make any necessary adjustments.

Access to Live Information and Flexible Reporting

Crafted ERP’s extensive report library, which has been created specifically for the brewery industry, has given the Beerfarm team access to real-time dashboards and advanced reporting capabilities their people need to be more efficient and effective in their roles. 

Deejay said, “The Crafted ERP reporting engine is so much more flexible than what we were working with. Having live data means the team can be proactive instead of reactive. Also, having confidence in the accuracy of reporting makes it much easier to make decisions which helps speed up growth.”

Saving Time & Effort Across the Business

Since go-live, the team have reported that the time spent trying to aggregate information from different systems has all but been eliminated. In addition to this, planning and scheduling production is much faster, meaning they are able to increase their production volumes as the market shifts. The demand and supply planning process has also been streamlined and automated, which makes the process infinitely more transparent.

The sales team have reported that only having to update one system is saving them hours of administration time a week.  The accounting team has also reported that invoicing and reconciling payments is now a much easier task.

Working with Doozy Solutions

At the outset of the project, Beerfarm and Doozy Solutions had set some lofty goals to have the system live in time for the beginning of a new fiscal year. In order to achieve this, the teams at Beerfarm and Doozy created a streamlined project plan designed to give them the best chance of success by prioritizing mission-critical functionality with a view to continually improve post go-live.

Deejay said, “I can’t speak highly enough of the effort the Doozy team exhibited to get us to where we are today. Our implementation consultants were first class, and really understood our business and processes. Their ability to problem-solve and find solutions to complicated problems that came up was outstanding.”

The Future

Beerfarm is now on track to achieve its production goal of 2 million litres this year, and they are confident that Crafted ERP will support them to continue this growth path well into the future. The trust that the solution has given them in their production and costing, as well as demand and supply planning, means they are now able to focus on strategy, rather than being tied down in the day-to-day tasks associated with running the brewery.

Simplifying their software ecosystem to a single brewery management platform has given them the ability to ramp up production without having to hire additional people to manage it. With Crafted ERP, Beerfarm can maintain its focus on manufacturing the best quality beer possible through improved production processes and quality control procedures.

Perhaps most excitingly, the time the team is saving means it is able to focus on achieving B Corp Certification, as its desire to meet the highest standards of verified social and environmental performance is a core pillar of the Beerfarm corporate mission.