Bear Creek Winery Utilizes Crafted ERP to Drive Efficiencies
The Customer
Before implementing Crafted ERP, Bear Creek Winery ran its bulk wine and case goods production subsidiaries on different systems. This approach created inefficiencies and accounting headaches, preventing the company from capitalizing on economies of scale.
Today, the winery relies on Crafted for all back-office functionality, including supply chain management to improve operational efficiency and liquid management to enable more accurate production costing. The winery now enjoys automated, consolidated reporting and streamlined inter-company transfers. Change is good!
About Bear Creek Winery
Headquartered in Lodi, California, Bear Creek Winery was founded in 1934 as a cooperative. The Kautz family acquired and renovated the winery in 1997 and still manages it today.
Over time, Bear Creek Winery has become the sixth-largest family-owned U.S. grape-growing and winery operation. With more than 7,000 acres of vineyards in the Lodi and Sierra Foothills appellations, Bear Creek has earned its reputation as one of California’s premier custom wine producers. Many leading bev-alc companies trust Bear Creek Winery as their preferred outsourced production partner.
The Challenges
Managing accounting and inventory for dual subsidiaries required a lot of error-prone, manual data entry. Not to mention that accurately allocating inventory for winery customers required tedious, hands-on work. Setting up new custom reports was another overly labor-intensive and challenging task.
Given the complexities and inefficiencies of the setup, including a complete lack of integration with the shipping and receiving departments, Bear Creek Winery knew it was time for a change.
“Crafted gave us the opportunity to develop a next-level data management system. I was a fan of how Doozy Solutions could build a system specifically designed for our needs,” says Tom Rappe, global business management director for Bear Creek Winery.
We had an internally developed program that reached its peak in performance and abilities. Crafted replaced that program completely and integrated better with other programs to improve the information flow across multiple departments.
Kevin Murphy | Controller
Bear Creen Winery
The Solutions
Operational Integration
Crafted empowers Bear Creek Winery with seamless, real-time integration of shipping, receiving and inventory management processes with accounting. The winery can now confidently assess and accurately report on inventory movement. The team also makes good use of the lot code volume tracking functionality to achieve sales objectives and make informed decisions.
“We now have greater visibility into our inventory allocations, which used to require a lot of communication and manual work,” explains Controller Kevin Murphy.
Customization
Integrating all existing internal systems into one ERP solution — with one single source of truth — was the goal. Kevin continues, “We explored a few competitors of Crafted and none seemed to be as customizable as Crafted.”
The system’s flexibility and scalability were a big win for Bear Creek. The solution also didn’t require significant internal resources to implement or administer, despite the enormous volume of wine the company produces and manages.
“Whether it’s our winemaking or sales department, we’re constantly sampling and analyzing more than 11,000,000 gallons of wine. Crafted offers the customization required for our operations,” said Kevin.
Most importantly, Crafted accommodates and enables both Bear Creek’s current operations and its long-term goals.
It’s night and day from before. Everything is in real time, and that’s my favorite thing. It’s more cohesive in terms of data and everything is up to date. I find myself constantly checking the dashboard. I love having all of the documentation and details of my relationship with my customer right at my fingertips.
Tom Rappe | Global Development Director
Bear Creek Winery
Working With Doozy Solutions
The Doozy team has collaborated with wineries worldwide to improve efficiencies, enable accurate reporting and, at the end of the day, make better wine. Crafted implementation experts were able to lean on that experience to create the optimal solution for Bear Creek.
“We spent a lot of time with the Doozy folks, educating them on our processes and needs. They were able to understand our requirements for a system and devise a plan to deliver a highly customized product,” says Kevin.
Crafted enables scalable pathways for growth. The platform helps businesses make the strategic decisions necessary to fuel expansion and improve profitability, from operational integration to precise inventory management and costing.
Sound compelling? Let’s go.
