Running a brewery isn’t just about crafting the perfect beer — it’s about juggling production, inventory, finances and logistics to ensure smooth operations and growth. For Beerfarm, a renowned brewery in Western Australia, the need to manage these aspects efficiently became crucial as the business expanded rapidly. With Crafted ERP powered by NetSuite, Beerfarm found the perfect tools to streamline operations, boost productivity, and maintain its commitment to sustainability.
A Vision for Beerfarm
Founded on a farm in the picturesque Margaret River region, Beerfarm was established with a clear vision: creating great beer while maintaining sustainability. The founder, Ian, converted old shearing sheds into brewing facilities, laying the groundwork for what would become one of Australia’s most respected breweries.
As Daniel Bales, Beerfarm’s head of technology, explained, “Our slogan is established for the future. We wanted to create a good product that people love, in a sustainable way, using innovative practices like recycling wastewater and feeding spent grain to cattle.”
While this eco-conscious approach sets Beerfarm apart from other Australian breweries, it also creates operational complexities. Managing sustainability initiatives alongside beer production, packaging and sales required a robust technology solution.
Managing Rapid Brewery Growth with Siloed Brewery Software
In 2020, Beerfarm quickly grew to reach a pivotal production volume of more than 1 million litres. To support its rapid growth and leadership goals, Beerfarm sought to improve its core business management processes for distribution area expansion, direct-to-consumer sales, and an increasingly complex production process.
In just under a decade, Beerfarm was producing enough beer to require external contract brewing to keep up with demand. As the business scaled, its reliance on a myriad of siloed and manual systems, including Xero, EKOS and Microsoft Excel, to manage its day-to-day operations strained the team and made it difficult to keep up.
“Everything was manual. Processes were spread across different systems, leading to inefficiencies and a lot of things getting lost. Tracking stock, managing production quality, and running accurate financial reports became increasingly difficult,” Daniel shared.
The Beerfarm team faced a situation in which, despite their best efforts, confidence in data and reporting and the time it took to aggregate data from different systems led to delayed and inaccurate information. In addition, the disparate nature of its quality control processes stunted the company’s desire to maintain tight control over product quality.
As production ramped up, Beerfarm’s ability to quickly and easily manage demand and supply planning was strained, which meant its inventory management teams struggled to keep up with the increased complexity of warehouse operations. Production costing was also an area the craft brewery wished to make more accurate as it was using Google Sheets to provide estimated and averaged cost of production and delivery.
Beerfarm sought a more comprehensive solution to provide a platform for growth and reduce the complexity of administration, data aggregation and reporting for its leaders and the wider organization.
Implementing Australian Brewery Software Built on NetSuite
Crafted ERP, Australian brewery management software, provided Beerfarm with a single platform to manage everything from brewing to inventory to sales. The transition wasn’t without its challenges, especially since many staff members were used to manual processes.
However, as Daniel noted, the benefits quickly became clear: “Crafted ERP allowed us to bring all our processes — brewing, logistics, stock management — into one system. It was a big change for our brewers, but now they can track everything in real time, from batch quality to inventory levels. We’ve reduced waste and can seamlessly manage contract brewing with other partners.”
Beerfarm’s partnership with Crafted ERP transformed key areas of its business:
Production and quality control
Beerfarm’s brewers now rely on Crafted ERP to oversee every step of the brewing process. All details are logged into the system, from monitoring pH levels to tracking quality tests. This granular tracking has enabled Beerfarm to improve the efficiency of its brewing process and ensure consistent quality in every batch.
Daniel said, “There are 10 to 15 different things we test for during brewing — everything from pH to volume — and now we can track it all in one place. We’ve seen significant efficiency improvements and reduced wastage in packaging.”
Inventory management
One of Beerfarm’s most significant operational challenges was managing inventory across multiple locations. The brewery’s main production facility is three hours south of Perth, but it also stores stock at third-party warehouses in Perth and Sydney. Managing inventory across multiple locations was a logistical nightmare.
Daniel highlighted how Crafted ERP solved this: “Being able to track stock in real-time across multiple locations has been massive for us. Now, we can monitor where everything is, manage stock transfers efficiently, and ensure we always have the right amount of product in the right place.”
This improvement in inventory visibility has also made Beerfarm’s stock-taking process more efficient, with fewer discrepancies and better data accuracy.
Financial reporting
With Crafted ERP’s robust financial tools, Beerfarm can now generate detailed reports that provide insights into costs, profitability and financial performance. The finance team uses the system to pull critical reports for strategic business decisions.
“One of the big advantages of Crafted ERP is how easy it is to customize reports. We can now see the cost per batch, track profitability, and clearly understand our financial performance. This was impossible with our previous manual systems,” shared Daniel.
Scalability for future growth
Crafted ERP’s scalability is a significant advantage for Beerfarm, especially as it expands production capacity. The software allows the brewery to partner with other craft beer producers to meet growing demand. And the best part? The brewery maintains complete visibility into its operations.
As Daniel put it: “The demand for our beer is high enough that we’ve had to work with other breweries to produce some of our beer. With Crafted ERP, managing this external manufacturing process is easier — we can track costs, quality and inventory, all within the same system.”
Day Brewery Software Implementation Wins
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 the Doozy Solutions local Australian implementation team. Since go-live, Beerfarm has:
- Improved quality control: Access to detailed reporting across batches and SKUs allows a level of traceability not previously possible. Identifying trends is simplified because of new confidence in the accuracy of the information. By personalizing Crafted ERP’s native brew log forms, the team has gained detailed analytics on production performance.
- Increased accuracy of data entry: Information is entered directly into a single system, which means the brewery can easily spot trends and variations in real time and make any necessary adjustments.
- Gained access to live information and flexible reporting: Real-time dashboards and advanced reporting capabilities made the team more efficient and effective in their roles.
- Saved time and effort organisation-wide: Time spent trying to aggregate information from different systems has been eliminated, and planning and scheduling production is much faster. The demand and supply planning process is streamlined and automated, making it infinitely more transparent.
- Improved efficiency across teams: The sales team has reported that updating only one system saves them hours of administration time a week. The accounting team has also reported that invoicing and reconciling payments are now much easier.
The Importance of a Smooth ERP Implementation
At the outset of the project, Beerfarm and Doozy Solutions established lofty goals to have the system live in time for the start of a new fiscal year. To achieve this, both companies created a streamlined project plan designed to give them the best chance of success by prioritizing mission-critical functionality and continually improving post-go-live.
While the benefits of Crafted ERP are clear, Daniel stressed that the success of brewery ERP software lies in its implementation. Daniel shared a valuable lesson for other breweries considering a brewery ERP. He said, “The key is not to over-customize during the implementation. Stick to the best practices the ERP is designed for, then adjust as you go. Over-customization can lead to a nightmare. We learned that keeping things simple up front is the best approach.”
Finding Success With Australian Brewery Software
Post-go-live, Beerfarm has continued its expansion to a now national presence. Simplifying its software ecosystem to a single brewery management platform has allowed the brewery to ramp up production and maintain focus on manufacturing the best quality beer possible.
The trust Crafted has given Beerfarm in its production, costing, demand and supply planning means it can focus on strategy rather than being tied down in the day-to-day tasks of running the brewery. The Australian craft brewery has confidence that Crafted ERP will support additional growth well into the future.
If you’re a brewery ready to take the next step in optimising your operations, now’s the time to explore how Crafted can help you brew smarter, not harder.
Keen to chat? Contact us.
