For businesses in the drinks industry, hidden costs can quietly drain your profits. Whether it’s inefficient stock handling, slow manual processes, or compliance errors, these hidden costs in the drinks industry are often caused by outdated systems. In this blog, we highlight five common hidden costs—and how upgrading to a modern business management system like Bevica can help you eliminate them.
What five hidden costs could be holding your drinks business back?
Hidden Cost #1: Overstocking and stockouts in the drinks industry
Overstocking and stockouts are two key inventory management problems. Overstocking issues, such as keeping too many units of your slower moving stock items, can lead to cash flow and storage problems. You want to be able to stock items your customers really want. Meanwhile, stockouts – or understocking items – will can lead to lost sales and damaged brand reputation. Both of these are as a result of poor or outdated inventory management systems.
A modern business management system such as ours solves these problems with real-time inventory tracking technology. This technology will ensure your business maintains optimal stock levels at all times. Our Bevica system also includes demand planning tools to project and plan stock levels and can be integrated with Lanham Associates’ advanced Demand Planning app. This app can provide you with inventory forecasting and dynamic replenishment advantages that can lower your inventory, increase your customer service and directly enhance your bottom line.
Hidden Cost #2: Manual order processing delays in drinks businesses
The manual processing of orders is both time-consuming and prone to errors. Processing delays can then lead to slower order fulfilment, increased operational costs and decreased daily sales. All can have a damaging impact on your brand reputation and customer loyalty.
Our modern Bevica solution allows you to move away from these time-consuming manual processes and implement new more efficient pre-configured workflows. With Bevica, you can automate your approvals processes, document management systems and invoice management processes. In addition, with the help of Microsoft Co-pilot, you can simplify your bank reconciliation process with automatic matching of bank statement lines to ledger entries. This automation of repetitive tasks will allow you to focus more on strategic financial planning and analysis.
Hidden Cost #3: Inefficient supply chain management
Supply chain inefficiencies are another common source of hidden costs in the drinks industry, especially when systems lack end-to-end visibility. Poor communication, lack visibility across the supply network, supplier issues as well as network disruptions will lead to delivery delays, delivery errors and unexpected costs. In addition, if you are unable to track your suppliers’ performance or anticipate supply chain disruption, your business will face heightened operational risks.
Comprehensive business management systems, such as Bevica, provides businesses with supply chain efficiency and end-to-end visibility from the producer to the consumer. From purchasing raw materials, stock items or marketing materials to selling stock, services or event tickets, you have full control of your procurement and sales processes. In addition, our automated supply chain routines will also help you plan for how much stock is available and when to pay your suppliers.
Hidden Cost #4: Compliance issues in the drinks industry
The UK alcoholic drinks industry is heavily regulated from point of production to point of sale. Regulations include production, import and export, wholesale and retail sale and taxation. Non-compliance with both UK and EU law can result in hefty fines and reputational damage.
The beauty of our Bevica solution is that is has built-in alcoholic duty management functionality. From the moment a stock item is created, Bevica holds all the information necessary to purchase, produce, transfer and sell both Duty-free and Duty Paid items. The software also allows you to comply with EORI and AWRS requirements.
Hidden Cost #5: Labour costs from repetitive manual tasks
Manual processes for data entry, order processing and inventory tracking are very labour intensive. As a result, will your employees have less time to spend on income-generating higher-value tasks but there are also increased labour costs as the lower-value tasks take longer to complete.
If you make the move to a modern system, with automated workflows and processes, your staff will spend less time on manual processes and will be able to focus on higher-value tasks which will drive growth. Our client, Howard Ripley Wines, saw this for themselves. Their move to Bevica allowed them to achieve significant productivity gains for their sales, marketing and operations teams.
Technology is the key to unlocking efficiency
Managing costs in the alcoholic drinks industry often involves overcoming significant inefficiencies. Outdated systems and manual processes can cause hidden costs, from inventory management problems like overstocking and stockouts to manual order processing delays. By adopting automated business solutions for alcohol companies, drinks businesses like yours can improve supply chain optimisation, reduce operational costs, and achieve a more streamlined and efficient operation.
Ready to find out more? Download our white paper today
Want to uncover the hidden costs in your drinks business and take action to reduce them? Download our free white paper, The ROI of Beverage Technology: Transforming Your Business Without Breaking the Budget, and learn how Bevica helps drinks companies cut hidden costs and improve operational efficiency.
