Brewery Roman: When old technology becomes an obstacle for growth
Brewery Roman had to ask themselves: Do we want to live with the risks and the challenges of an old, unsupported IT system, or do we go for Drink-IT, a modern brewery management solution?
Brewery 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.
Struggling with old systems
Brewery Roman was running on an old, over-customised legacy AS/400 system that was holding back their business.
Relying on an old and outdated system for their business processes Roman struggled with operational risks, low levels of automation, poor data quality and lack of legislative support. Due to low functional coverage and disparate systems, Roman had to use spreadsheets and re-key data between a number of different systems – all of which were slowing down their business processes and potentially causing errors.
In addition, due to disparate systems, Roman did not have the seamless, integrated structure it takes to scale distribution and manufacturing as well as create proper visibility across their entire value chain. For example, without easy access to inventory data it is hard to plan for upcoming demand and tell customers about expected delivery dates. Therefore, they asked themselves: Is it really worth the risk running on a degrading system? Their answer was no.
Removing the obstacles for growth with new technology
Brewery Roman knew that changing their IT systems would represent a cost. However, they were also deeply concerned about the high price they would have to pay for maintaining the old system, not least for missing out the business and efficiency opportunities by sticking to their antiquated, over-customised systems. Roman tackled the challenges by investing in a brewery management solution that would make it easy to integrate, streamline, simplify and automate their business processes, and take the need for heavy customisation out of the equation and ensure easy, risk free and fast implementation.
“Replacing our old system with a modern brewery management solution has enabled us to grow and create business value faster,” says Tom Schautteet, Head of Bookkeeping, Brouwerij Roman.
Upgrading the business
Today Roman runs their business on new technology with built-in best practice processes that have enabled them to work significantly smarter across all their processes. This has had a huge impact on the brewery’s productivity. They have boosted their financial management, handling of tax, tasks, returns, discount and promotions, orders, transport and reporting. Analysis and reporting is done with Business Intelligence that gathers information directly from the brewery management solution and gives management easy and quick access to reports on sales and much more.
“Today we have a modern brewery management solution that out-of-the-box supports our growth,” concludes Tom Schautteet.
10 success stories from leading breweries
The story of Brouwerij Roman is only one of 10 success stories on how leading breweries have overcome a wide variety of different business challenges by means of technology. We have collected these stories in a casebook called "10 success stories from leading breweries - Learn how your peers made beverage a better business with IT".
