Choose Dedicated Beverage ERP Software for Sector-Specific Features

While the food and beverage industries are frequently grouped together and referred to as a singular whole, you know as a beverage manufacturing professional that your sector is distinct and has its own particular considerations. Your processes are highly specialized for the items that you produce, and you need functionalities designed for the tasks that are critical to your operations.

Enterprise resource planning (ERP) solutions have become widely accepted as the best means for managing all departments and the many important day-to-day procedures through one powerful platform, but assuming that just any offering on the market will cover your requirements would be a mistake. Only dedicated beverage ERP software will get the job done in your circumstances.

In this post we’ll take a look at some of the ways that a sector-specific ERP system tailors standard features to the unique nature of beverages, as well as the purpose-built tools that help businesses like yours tackle beverage-specific challenges.

General ERP Features, Tailored to Beverage Businesses

While most food and beverage ERP solutions come with a host of features that are important regardless of your business’s sector, there are nuances within the beverage industry that require additional accommodations in order to achieve the level of control you need. Here are four key functions of beverage ERP software and how they’re specially suited for the segment.

Recipe and Formula Management

Beverage companies often produce a wide range of varieties, and each has a very specific recipe that makes it look and taste just right. Consider the popularity of La Croix’s line of lightly flavored sparkling waters and how fine of a balance each different flavor strikes—consistency is key in their success. Your customers want to know that every time they buy one of your drinks, it will meet their expectations.

Recipe and formula management features of ERP systems are built to meet this need, but in the beverage sector, an even greater level of detail and granularity is sometimes necessary, particularly as new premium offerings grow in popularity and you explore ways to capitalize on the opportunity they represent. That’s why advanced solutions—like Aptean’s beverage ERP—let you dial in the ingredients and amounts with absolute precision, ensuring the same great customer experiences over and over again.

Compliance

With food and beverage safety a hot topic and regulatory bodies increasing the stringency of their standards, assuring the compliance of your operations and products is more important than ever. Most ERP solutions will come with some level of compliance execution, but working in beverages, you need to make sure you’re prepared to meet the specific requirements to which your products are subject.

This is especially true for organizations that produce alcoholic beverages, as they are regulated more strictly in their packaging, labeling and volumes—and in the U.S., there are additional requirements put in place by the Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau. Sector-specific beverage ERP software like Aptean’s facilitates consolidation of all necessary regulatory and financial compliance documents digitally, streamlining the process and ensuring reliable results.

Traceability

Maintaining total bi-directional traceability of your materials and finished goods is crucial for food and beverage safety, especially when it comes to identifying contaminations and avoiding product recalls. Beverage ERP software will keep all of your information up-to-date and accessible through a user-friendly interface.

The best solutions for beverage organizations go a step further, though. For example, knowing that production machines, vendor information, lot numbers and certification values can be important in this sector, Aptean’s beverage ERP is equipped to record and maintain these kinds of data, among many others.

Also, knowing that you likely work with a number of ingredient suppliers and sales outlets, you need a system that can integrate with your supply chain partners’ platforms for truly end-to-end visibility. Being built on the framework of Microsoft Dynamics 365, all of Aptean’s offerings are at the cutting edge in terms of adaptability based on the situation you face.

Production Management

Production scheduling modules are typical features of food and beverage ERP systems, but you need more functionality than the average solution provides. Beverage production operations are complex, and your software should allow for detailed configurations and time-saving automations to maximize your efficiency without sacrificing quality and precision.

Aptean’s beverage ERP allows you to create workflows visible for all employees, manage the flow of lots as they come into your warehouse and are picked for use in production, and set up multiple production scenarios to determine your best approach to meet your goals each day. It also keeps all of your information in a singular database, making sure that all stakeholders are apprised of your plans for execution and actual performance.

Sector-Specific Tools for Unique Challenges

Some considerations are particular to the beverage industry and require special attention for businesses like yours, especially as new trends emerge in the segment. That doesn’t mean they don’t have the same level of importance as any other matter—the following features can be just as important to your success.

Packaging

Beverage packaging varies a lot from product to product and brand to brand, with different materials from plastic and aluminum to glass and more eco-friendly cardboard cartons popular among particular item types. You need a system that can accommodate them all, as well as return packaging, which is most relevant for distributors.

In Aptean’s beverage ERP, packaging specifications can be tied to each individual offering in your lineup, ensuring that the right vessel is selected for the beverage at hand. Likewise, managing the return of pallets, crates, barrels and even loose bottles can be coordinated with your partners downstream to simplify the process of reclaiming and repurposing your materials.

Automatic Excise Administration

Excise administration is a must for any manufacturer producing duty-free beverages. These companies are subject to strict customs requirements, and meeting those is a critical part of their success with the associated goods.

Manual processes and paper records aren’t good enough in today’s fast-paced world, so you need a solution like Aptean’s beverage ERP to digitally store and transmit the important excise duty documents for regulatory bodies. By expediting what would otherwise be a fairly time-intensive process, you’ll be well on your way to smoothly distributing your duty-free beverages.

Integration with Ecommerce Platforms

Ordering food and beverage products online is an increasingly popular way to shop for these necessities, and with global disruptions top-of-mind as we emerge from the COVID-19 pandemic era, offering your items on online platforms can be vital for securing the sales you’re shooting for. The various platforms like Amazon and Vivino have their own technology, and your beverage ERP software needs to be able to integrate with them.

Aptean’s beverage ERP gives you this functionality and can even connect your proprietary webshop to the new distribution model you’ve chosen. With our solution, you’ll be ready to capitalize on this opportunity and open up entirely new sales channels.

Partners Who Know Your Industry

When you’re trying to decide which ERP system is right for your beverage business, you need to be on the lookout for these features and ask the critical questions of the various solutions providers to ensure that you’ll be getting the tools you need. If the vendor really knows the beverage industry, their expertise will be clear both in how they’ve developed their offering, as well as how they can engage with you as a partner.

At Aptean, we take the role of partner seriously, and that means our professionals have taken the time to really understand the unique challenges of the beverage sector. They aren’t going to simply sell you a product and let you puzzle out the implementation and best practices involved. We help create a detailed deployment plan for all of our clients and make sure that the features they need most go live first so that improvement can be made as soon as possible.

We also offer flexible cloud setups that will keep your operations running smoothly in an increasingly mobile environment. The 99.9% uptime offered by our redundant servers and dedicated IT teams will also keep you moving with maximum efficiency despite any disruptions that might occur.

Ready to learn more about what our industry-specific beverage solution, Aptean Food & Beverage ERP can do for your beverage organization? Contact us today, or request a personalized demo.