Imagine a craft brewery, their beers are delicious, they have a popular taproom, but behind the scenes, there's a struggle that's all too common in the industry. The brewery's data systems are rudimentary, a patchwork of point-of-sale (POS) systems, financial software, and a whole lot of Excel. For them extracting meaningful insights from these sources is like trying to brew a new beer without a recipe - possible, but fraught with uncertainty and inefficiency.

This brewery's challenge? Understanding the relationship between cost per barrel and sales per barrel across different areas of the business, crucial for gauging profitability. For instance, comparing the profitability of beer sold in kegs versus cans, or assessing each wholesale customer's value. In the current setup, achieving this holistic view is a herculean task. Data from POS and financial systems are siloed and disjointed. Combining this data into Excel, a task that requires advanced data skills, is time-consuming. By the time the team cobbles together a report or visualization, they're left with no time for actual analysis or strategic decision-making.

Enter modern analytics solutions, like Tableau. They revolutionize this process, automating the extraction and enhancement of data from source systems. Suddenly, the brewery's team isn't spending hours in data preparation; they're diving straight into analysis.

With Tableau, the brewery can now instantly visualize the cost and sales per barrel across different beers and packages. They can effortlessly switch perspectives, analyzing profitability at various levels - from specific beer types to individual wholesale customers. Let’s look at a few examples:

In this first example, we want to see the relationship of sales & cost per barrel for our four flagship beers across:

1. Wholesale cans
2. Wholesale keg
3. Taproom cans
4. Taproom draft

By displaying these graphically, we can quickly pick up many insights.

Some of these are straightforward and confirm previous suspicions, such as taproom profitability is always greater than wholesale, IPA’s cost more to make than Pale, and canned beer has higher cost than draft.

Others lead to specific actions like raising the price on taproom cans or potentially lowering price on fruit beer wholesale to increase volume.

In this 2nd example, the brewery is analyzing the relationship between volume and margin % across their top 20 customers. They can quickly see how each customer relates to their peers and highlight some areas of opportunity.

For example, they get a great margin from Restaurant L, but their volume is very low; they can take action to increase the volume to a very profitable customer.

These modern analytics solutions aren't just about saving time; they're about empowering breweries to make data-driven decisions quickly and accurately. They democratize data, making advanced analytics accessible to everyone, not just those with technical expertise.

The era of wrestling with data is over! Modern analytics, now accessible to all, is a game changer for craft breweries. It's not just about understanding data; it's about unlocking the potential of your brewery, making informed decisions that propel your business forward. In a world where data is king, these tools are your brewery's crown.