By: Sarah Buckholtz
June 17, 2022
The average brewer gets into brewing because they love beer. And the act of brewing, of testing and failing, and testing again; of experimenting and creating.
What they don’t necessarily get excited over is paperwork. And yet, for the average brewer, the act of brewing is just one piece of running a very complicated business. One that often requires a lot of paperwork.
Enter software, technology that’s supposed to make brewery operations easier. But often the software available feels clunky, bloated, and difficult to use, because it’s either built for much larger breweries or designed for a different industry.
Next Glass’s suite of brewery solutions including Ollie and Oznr, lets you manage every aspect of your business activities from grain to glass. Unlike other technologies in the space, this trio of products was purpose-built for the brewing industry. Breweries can manage production, wholesale, and retail orders, as well as direct-to-consumer ecommerce all from one platform.
Ready to streamline your operations from brewing to logistics? Let’s get started.
What We’ll Cover in This Piece:
What Is Ollie Ops?
Photo by Elevate on Unsplash
Ollie Ops is easy-to-use software to help you manage your brewery operations. Designed to do all the heavy lifting and get out of your way, Ollie Ops was created by a professional brewer who experienced first-hand how frustrating it is to manage your brewery’s day-to-day operations. Brew log entry, TTB reporting, raw materials forecasting and more, made easy.
The Top 3 Benefits of Ollie Ops
- Comprehensive Recipe Management – A recipe management tool keeps all of your recipe’s specifications from one tab including the grain database, grain bills, color calculations, and more.
- TTB Reporting Generated Automatically – Create government-required paperwork documents in seconds that look amazing.
- Real Time Inventory – Combine your current inventory into one dashboard so you know exactly what raw materials need to be ordered. Receive automated notifications when levels fall below your specified reorder threshold.
But managing a process from raw materials through finished goods is only part of the story.
What Is Ollie Order?
Ollie Order facilitates order transactions within a simple to use interface. Users can process orders and get a single source-of-truth view of inventory, plus utilize the same system for invoicing, payment processing and reporting.
Once a beer is brewed and recorded as finished goods inventory, it has to be sold. And that brings an entirely different set of challenges.
Incoming orders can take on many shapes and sizes: email, fax, text, or via the super successful field sales team. But allocating those orders against finished goods inventory can be a real balancing act.
The Top 3 Benefits of Ollie Order
- Detailed Custom Reporting – Makes it easy to create invoices as well as options for reordering bulk purchases.
- Record Visits in 30 Seconds – Sales representatives can record sales visits and calls and make updates on accounts with just a few swipes from their mobile device on the road no matter where they are.
- Build Strong Customer Relationships From One Dashboard – Manage your customer data, visits, and activities in the same place you input orders. View all potential retail (B2B) customers within each state and province, create custom groups, and more.
But to make an already complicated business model more complicated, the pandemic has fueled an already building desire for more ecommerce in the beer industry.
What Is Oznr?
Photography courtesy of Juniper Photon from Unsplash
Oznr is an online craft beverage marketplace that allows beer enthusiasts of the world to connect directly with the brands they love. As with all of Next Glass Brewery Solutions, it is purpose built for the craft beverage industry, with features to handle the high demand of special releases as well as membership programs without spreadsheets.
Many breweries are finding that they have another channel through which to sell their products: ecommerce. Online sales for both everyday beers and limited, special releases present a unique set of challenges.
The Top 3 Benefits of Oznr
- Create Exclusive Offers – Highlight unique bottle releases or move inventory and make it accessible to beer lovers across the United States.
- Sell Tickets Directly to Your Events – Easily sell tickets for events with Oznr’s custom ticket service as an addition to using the platform.
- Market Bottle Societies + Memberships – Build up your bottle society and membership clubs by offering early access to public releases, automated pick-up notifications, private sales, and more.
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