Technological Platform To Manage The wine brewing Innovation

The following table describes the intended features for the new solution compared to the features available in the company’s existing software.

In this context and considering that the software currently existing in the company does not have the necessary features to perform an efficient management of the business related to the oenology sector, the objective is to find an  innovative technological tool that achieves this goal, through the standardization of procedures and its electronic registration, allowing the Seeker to obtain a global view of resources allocation.

The Seeker, belongs to a large Portuguese business group operating in the national market for over two decades. This company has been gradually involved on a more active international presence.

Currently, the production area of the Seeker is operating at location A, the company management is operating at location B and the accounting department is operating at locations B and C. The accounting is performed in two different programs: the Agrifood Management Platform and the SAP program. The fact that there are two different programs means that the information and knowledge obtained is not always coherent. On the other hand, the company does not have technological tools that allow the automatic crossing of data between the two mentioned programs.

The distance between the production centers and the decision center, as well as the double registration of invoices, causes problems and constraints between the company departments because the crossing of information between the two programs has to be done manually, making the process slow and subject to errors.

One of the consequences of the inefficiency of the current process is that the reports required for analysis by the management board are issued after the agreed date.

Other problems are related to the lack of real time product costing in wine brewing, tracking of materials and traded products, as well as effective stock management.

At the company’s Location A (intended for production activities and first accounting of purchases and sales), the Seeker has a non-proprietary software aimed to companies in the Agrifood sector – Agrifood Management Platform. All relevant information related to the development of the business is registered in this software, and all inherent invoicing is also performed. However, the software has been developed specifically for the agricultural and oenological area, presenting many gaps from an accounting point of view, namely, the stock/inventory calculation, since it is based on the concept of average price, introducing significant deviations in the cost calculations for each product.

In the wine brewing sector the general procedure adopted for document reception event, by the company is the following:

·       Supplier invoices are sent to location A, then they are received by the administrative manager and then forwarded to the General Manager. After validation and signature, these are distributed according to their nature. Invoices referring to farms are forwarded to the person in charge of Viticulture. The invoices for the winery are forwarded to the person in charge of oenology and production. The respective managers insert the invoices of the suppliers (e.g. suppliers of stoppers, labels, bottles, etc.) into the Agrifood program for calculation of the production cost – this process is time consuming.

·       Afterwards, the invoices are sent to location C, in order to be accounted for (usually after the deadline). Once the invoices have been accounted in SAP, it is necessary to cross-check the information of the invoices inserted in the Agrifood program with SAP. When the amounts are not equal in both programs, accounting adjustments must be done. This cross-check is performed manually and invoice by invoice;

Customers’ invoices are issued in the Agrifood program. A file is then sent with the customers’ invoices to be integrated in SAP.

Considering the wine case and given that the registration of products is carried out in the current software through the concept of average price (“division by the total of liters”), the price calculated and made available by the software corresponds to an average price, and it is not possible to obtain the unit cost per bottle sold.

The main benefit for the Seeker will be in terms of management efficiency: Knowing exactly the cost of each bottle of wine and making a seamless financial report to Location A and in a timely manner, will result in maximizing the productivity of its employees.

The main expectations to be achieved with the new solution are:

·       Digitization and automation of production and control processes registration;

·       Know the unit production costs;

·       Control of unit production costs;

·       Tracking of raw materials and traded products;

·       Active stock management, based on the definition of critical stocks and/or future sales projections;

·       Effectively ensure the transmission of all documentation between departments;

·       Minimization of occurrences of document losses.

·       Compliance with deadlines established for financial reporting to the Corporate.

Parameters in order to understand that this is the best solution:

• A solution that allows integration with SAP
• A solution that allows invoicing at the production site
• A solution that allows remote access to information, within a VPN environment;
• Level of detail of the unit cost control;
• Tracking of raw materials and traded products

Exclusion criteria:

• Lack of integration with the SAP platform.

• User friendly platform, accessible to accredited collaborators, according to access profiles (which must be previously parameterized)
• The solution must detail all included requirements and features (see also the table attached), as well as its limitations
• Platform/database for entering all requested services/purchases, with indication of supplier, value, type of service, product, etc
• User friendly POS platform for entering data in the respective functional areas of the company, minimizing delays in reporting information to production/management
• Export the information centralized in the platform (with pre-defined reports) to Excel must be possible as well as history query (by product, year, etc.);
• Provide Dashboards to support the management of the company (to selected access profiles);
• Provide customizable, efficiency and productivity dashboards in the factory floor;
• Benchmarking analyses between different variables (to selected access profiles) must be possible;
• Have a data structure compatible and communicable with the SAP;
• Allow interconnection with other existing computer systems within the company, when applicable;
• Detailed and justified cost for the development and implementation of a demonstration prototype of the solution, as well as the intended payment conditions;
• The solution should present an estimated deadline for its implementation of wine brewing innovation.

Awards:- €5,000

Deadline:- 19-12-2020

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