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.”
This eco-conscious approach not only sets Beerfarm apart from other Australian breweries. It created operational complexities. Managing sustainability initiatives alongside beer production, packaging and sales required a robust system.
Managing Rapid Brewery Growth with Siloed Brewery Software
Having grown quickly to reach a pivotal production volume of more than 1 million litres in the 2020 financial year, Beerfarm planned to improve its core business management processes to support its leadership goals of rapid growth, distribution area expansion, increasing DTC sales and streamlining 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, financial management and production planning 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.
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 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.”
The Beerfarm team faced 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, 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 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 as they were using Google Sheets to provide estimated and averaged cost of production and delivery,
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 brewing process step. Every detail is 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 the biggest operational challenges for Beerfarm was managing inventory across multiple locations. The brewery’s main production facility is three hours south of Perth, but they also store stock at third-party warehouses in Perth and Sydney. Managing this spread-out inventory 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 they expand their production capacity. The software has allowed them to contract brew with other breweries to meet growing demand without sacrificing visibility into their 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 Doozy’s local Australian implementation team in Australia. Since go-live, Beerfarm:
- Improved Quality Control: Access to detailed reporting across batches and SKUs allowed a level of traceability not previously possible. Identifying trends was 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 about their production performance.
- Increased Accuracy of Data Entry: Information is entered directly into a single system, which means they can easily spot trends and variations in real time and make any necessary adjustments.
- Access to Live Information and Flexible Reporting: Real-time dashboards and advanced reporting capabilities made the team more efficient and effective in their roles.
- Saving Time & Effort Across the Business: Time spent trying to aggregate information from different systems was eliminated, and planning and scheduling production is much faster, allowing them to increase production volumes as the market shifts. The demand and supply planning process was streamlined and automated, making it infinitely more transparent.
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 had set lofty goals to have the system live in time for the beginning of a new fiscal year. 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 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 an ERP system:
“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.”
As of publication, Beerfarm was on track to achieve its production goal of 2 million litres that same year. They have confidence that Crafted ERP will support them in additional growth well into the future. The trust that the solution has given them in their production, costing, demand, and supply planning means they focus on strategy rather than being tied down in the day-to-day tasks of running the brewery.
Simplifying their software ecosystem to a single brewery management platform has allowed them to ramp up production without hiring 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 saves means it can focus on achieving B Corp Certification, as the Beerfarm corporate mission’s core pillar is its desire to meet the highest standards of verified social and environmental performance.
If you’re a brewery ready to take the next step in optimizing your operations, now’s the time to explore how Crafted can help you brew smarter, not harder. Keen to chat? Contact us.
