The festive season is a busy one for the drinks industry and 2022’s was no different. Figures from a recent Drinks Retailing article stated that “Christmas week alone saw an 11.6% increase in BWS sales compared to the same period in 2021”. Now that it is all over, it is time to reflect on your business’s festive period. How did it go? How well did your business management system cope with it? Here we take a look at five signs that 2023 could be the year you move to Bevica.

1. Your siloed systems are letting you down

Many legacy business management systems suffer from a “silo mentality”. All the data about the different parts of the business – e.g. finance, inventory, sales – is there but in separate and discrete operational systems. This same data, therefore, needs to be manually inputted into the different systems at different times. As a result, there is a duplication of effort and the risk of unnecessary input errors.

With Bevica, the days of a silo mentality are over. Instead, your business will have a single source of truth. You will only need to add information about vendors, customers or products once. This information then automatically flows throughout the different parts of the Bevica system.

Consequently, you will have a consolidated view of all your business data. This can be:

  • Financial data such as cash flow, bank reconciliations, fixed assets and budget forecasts
  • Inventory data such as current stock levels, duty status of particular orders or best before dates
  • Sales data such as best customers, outstanding sales quotes and return orders.

This single view of your data ensures that you and everyone in your business all have the same data to hand and, as a result, are able to make crucial business decisions based on it.

2. The finance system you’ve always used isn’t cutting it anymore

As your business grows, your business processes and management reporting requirements will start to change and become more sophisticated.  At this time, many businesses realise that their current finance system no longer has all the functionality that they need to do business effectively. For example, you may have a warehouse where you want to use mobile data scanners.  Or you may want to introduce RPA into your business to automate repetitive, rules-based business processes that are often tedious and time-consuming.

This is where a modern cloud-based system such as Bevica comes into its own. Not only does it have speciality drinks industry features, such as enhanced stock management, item information and duty management included as standard, but it also has built-in integrations with drinks industry partners such as bonded warehouses, WMS partners, ecommerce partners and many more. This means that if and when you need to add new functionality, Bevica has the capability to grow and adapt to meet your growing needs.

3. Your financial reports aren’t readily available

With your current financial system, do you have to wait days for someone else in the business to supply you with the latest financial figures? And when you do get them, is it difficult to work out exactly what the reports are telling you about your current sales levels or best customers or who your bad debtors are?

A key selling point of Bevica, which is powered by Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central, is that it offers real-time business insights at every level of your business. This can be as straightforward as simple financial reports such as a cash flow statement, balance sheet or profit and loss statement (which are all available out of the box in Bevica and Bevica Select) through to in-depth and bespoke reporting available through Bevica’s seamless integrations with Power BI and Jet Reports from insightsoftware.

4. Your business management system doesn’t have easy remote access

According to a recent Mintel report, the size of the UK cloud computing market was estimated at £41 billion in 2022, and is forecasted to grow to £59 billion in 2024. It is therefore very clear that many businesses are still continuing to push rapidly ahead with their digital transformation plans.

Has your business been trying to do this? Or are you still stuck with an on-premise system approach that is struggling to support the increasing demands made upon it, particularly when it comes to remote access?  Moving to a native cloud-based system, such as Bevica, will allow your employees to perform both back-end and front-end tasks from anywhere, on any device and at any time. Also, up to date business data can be accessed on the go which means that important business decisions can be made without any unnecessary delays.

5. You have concerns about security of both your system and your data

Are you currently using legacy finance software that is either coming towards, or has already reached, the end of its product lifecycle? There are numerous risks attached to using a system that is out of support. There could be security issues, problems with bugs that cannot be and are not being fixed, as well as compatibility difficulties with the newest and latest software.

Bevica, as a cloud-based system, is always up to date. Microsoft Business Central, which powers Bevica, has two major updates every year (one in April and the second in October) – as does Bevica. In addition, the Bevica team also regularly roll out industry-specific updates to the system. And critical fixes are rolled out as soon as possible after they have passed the testing stage. All this means, that you should never have any concerns about the security of your business management system or the data held in it when you make the move to Bevica.

Bevica Select: a rapid installation option for growing, ambitious businesses

Bevica Select is our solution especially aimed at growing and ambitious businesses that want to get up and running with Bevica quickly and cost-effectively.

Features include:

  • A defined project plan that allows businesses to achieve a rapid go-live (on average within four months)
  • Managed in the cloud, accessible from day one with no need for dedicated IT infrastructure
  • Industry best practice training plan with an online training portal
  • Fully configured training environment
  • A ready to go production environment with pre-packaged drinks industry setup
  • Easy to use Excel data migration templates

Want to find out more?

Want to find out more about Bevica Select and find out why 2023 could be the year that you make the move to Bevica? Book a demo with one of our expert team today.