Photo by Roberta keiko Kitahara Santana on Unsplash
In today’s article, you will learn how to automate daily and weekly tasks required to manage your brewery business.
Automating these repetitive workflows using software can save you significant time. It is crucial to complete these tasks, and automation is an efficient solution.
Regrettably, many breweries are not aware that software solutions exist for automating these tasks, and they assume they do not have enough time to streamline their workflow.
Automating tasks saves time, standardizes processes, and reduces bottlenecks. This frees you to focus on important work.
I will share some areas where software can help automate your business.
The areas are:
- HR
- Emails
- Expenses
- Production
- Ordering
HR Software: KIN HR
KIN HR is a solution designed specifically for small businesses. It streamlines the management of sick leave, vacation time, onboarding, and employee performance reviews.
When I first started managing employee time off, I was bombarded with numerous questions from my team regarding their remaining time off, rollover, and how to request time off. It was a time-consuming task to respond to these inquiries. Additionally, keeping track of each employee’s time off using a spreadsheet proved overwhelming and time-consuming.
KIN came to the rescue by providing a platform for employees to submit their requests and keep track of their available time.
When our company started expanding and various department heads began hiring, we utilized the onboarding process. This ensured that onboarding was standardized company-wide and that all vital company documents were easily accessible in one place.
KIN’s flexibility allows it to grow with your company, making it a worthwhile investment.
Email: Spark
It is common to overlook the importance of automating and streamlining your email. Given that email is often the most frequent administrative task in one’s job, it is important to optimize this process and avoid wasting unnecessary time.
Spark is a versatile platform that can be used on multiple devices to collect emails from all of your email accounts and organize them as they arrive. You have the ability to create response templates, flag emails for follow-up if someone does not reply, and schedule emails to be sent at a specific time. Additionally, you can establish unique rules for each email as it is received, and my personal favorite feature is the ability to pin emails for later viewing.
Expenses: Abacus
Managing expenses can be a tedious and bothersome task for both the person in charge of collecting and organizing them, such as a sales rep and the individual in the company responsible for reviewing and managing them.
To simplify this process, Abacus provides automation by linking to all company cards. As transactions are processed, the cardholder is prompted to categorize and leave notes in accordance with the company’s guidelines. After the expenses have been completed, the system sends an email to the administrator, allowing them to reconcile the expenses within the company.
Production: Jotform
Created by the king of automation himself, Aytekin Tank, who just released his book, Automate Your Busywork: Do Less, Achieve More, and Save Your Brain for the Big Stuff — available from aytekintank.com and Amazon.
Jotform is a versatile tool that can be utilized for various needs within your company. However, for today’s discussion, we will specifically concentrate on its usefulness in the production process.
I used JotForm to create a form to keep track of daily production. This form recorded details such as the brand name, amounts produced, packaging type, etc. Each time production was finished production team filled out the information. After the user submitted the form, the information was automatically added to a spreadsheet, emailed to relevant parties, and saved.
One of the standout features is the ability to edit. If you happen to have entered a number incorrectly, simply click on the “edit” button on the form submission, and you can make the necessary changes. Once the changes are made, the spreadsheet will be updated, and an email with the corrected information will be resent.
Ordering: BrewOptix
Managing sales can become difficult as you grow your business and add more salespeople to your team. Whether you’re selling through distributors or managing self-distribution, the ordering process can become chaotic. To address this industry-wide challenge, I developed BrewOptix.
I found it difficult to keep track of various messages related to my beer business through texts and emails, especially when changes occurred. So, I decided to centralize all my beer information in a single location. This proved to be a valuable resource not only for my distributors but also for my sales team. Whenever a distributor placed an order, BrewOptix sent emails to both the distributor and the brewery employees. If there were any changes, the emails were resent with highlighted updates, making it easy to identify them quickly.
Once the product was shipped, the system automatically removed the items from our inventory. This enabled us to quickly identify any discrepancies and plan our brewery schedule accordingly.