The Business Intelligence Brewery

Brewing is one of the most ancient of human activities. LiveLogic helps brewers craft their beers with more insight into manufacturing process and demand, so they can focus on the most profitable brews. It's insight the monks in the Middle Ages never had.

Craft brewers have many of the same problems as manufacturers: they have to cut costs and identify sales opportunities. Ordinarily, this necessitates hours of spreadsheet analysis and educated guesswork. The analyses you see below eliminate the guesswork and drastically reduce the time needed to extract actionable management intelligence.

Craft breweries survive on the dedication of their customers to their product. Every brewer, indeed every manufacturer, must opportunistically cull loss leaders from the product line, without losing key customers. The analysis below shows the sales of the breweries current offerings. Users can drill down to view sales across wholesalers, retailers or from the brewery itself. At the bottom right, users can see the necessary reserves needed for the next three months. It is clear from the low demand for seasonal beers like "Dim Wit", "Sprung" and "Appropriately Cocky" that they do not need to be produced over the next several months.

This second analysis show the sales by distributor, and what those distributors are purchasing. Although Cooper Beverage is the clear leader in volume, Walker Martin, the smallest distributor, has grown nearly 50% over the past 12 months. Users can drill down and see the specific beers that distributors are buying. Maybe the success of Walker Martin can be expanded to the other distributors by analyzing the profitability of the beers they are purchasing?

LiveLogic has clearly illustrated the power business intelligence brings to the unique problems of brewers and manufacturers. Perhaps most importantly, these analyses can be recreated in a matter of hours and updated throughout the year, preventing the need for hours of wasteful spreadsheet creation and guesswork.