Drink-IT ERP Success Story: Roman Brewery

HEADLINE

• Brouwerij Roman was founded back in 1545 and is the oldest family brewery in Belgium. They produce and sell a wide range of Belgian beers, mineral waters and lemonades, and have an annual turnover of approximately 10 million euros.

Brouwerij Roman's old, unsupported AS/400 system could no longer meet the needs of a modern brewery. On top of that, their system was 100% customised and also 100% cumbersome to change and update.

Therefore, the brewery wanted to replace the old system with a much faster and more flexible solution that could be easily implemented and was based on standard technology – but finding the right solution and the right supplier became a daunting task in itself. “Most suppliers do not have brewery-specific know-how or experience. For example, many ERP-providers don´t know the first thing about, say, excise duty and returns processes, or the complex discount structure in the brewery business,” says Tom Schautteet, Head of Bookkeeping, Brouwerij Roman.

With Drink-IT, the brewery found what they were looking for: flexibility, standard technology built on best practises for the brewery industry, and experienced consultants with deep insight into the industry.

“With Drink-IT we´re benefitting from a modern beverage business software solution that out-of-the-box supports our business and our growth,” says Tom Schautteet.

Brouwerij Roman benefits from increased efficiency across their task management, returns management, discount and promotions, order processing, transport management and financial management and reporting. Reporting is done with the Drink-IT BI module, that gathers information from Drink-IT and enables Roman to call up management reports on i.e. sales statistics.

“We were able to create business value faster with Drink-IT compared to other solutions we looked at - they all needed cumbersome customization to fit the processes in a brewery."

Fizzed Up Efficiency Out-Of-The-Box

Brouwerij Roman brought in an external consultant company to help the company map out its needs and select a solution. After a detailed analysis of different options, they chose Drink-IT because of the solutions' standardized, brewery-specific functionality that matched their needs and demands out-of-the-box.

"We did under no circumstances want a solution that had to be customized to support a brewery´s business processes,” says Tom Schautteet.

Brouwerij Roman's Drink-IT solution delivers fully integrated functionality for financial management, excise duty control contract management, task management, returns management, discount and promotions, transport management, EMCS and Business Intelligence.

"The Drink-IT people has extensive knowledge of the brewery industry, and their know-how played an important role for our successful implementation,” says Tom Schautteet.