Software AG > Case Studies > Water, barley, hops— and integration: A craft beer start-up positions to thrive with webMethods.io

Water, barley, hops— and integration: A craft beer start-up positions to thrive with webMethods.io

Customer Company Size

Startup

Region

Europe

Country

Netherlands

Product

webMethods.io Integration Free Forever Edition

Tech Stack

Shopify
HubSpot
Slack

Implementation Scale

Enterprise-wide Deployment

Impact Metrics

Productivity Improvements
Cost Savings

Technology Category

Platform as a Service (PaaS) - Connectivity Platforms

Applicable Industries

Food & Beverage

Applicable Functions

Sales & Marketing
Business Operation

Use Cases

Supply Chain Visibility
Inventory Management

Services

System Integration

About The Customer

Foreach Brewing is an Amsterdam-based microbrewery that sells a range of small-batch beers in bars, restaurants, specialty shops, and online directly to customers. Established in June 2020, it maintains a library of more than a dozen beer recipes and specializes in customized brews for events and celebrations. As of September 2020, it had four people on staff and was selling approximately 1,000 bottles of beer per month. When the founders of Foreach Brewing decided to turn their hobby into an enterprise, their goal was to spend their time spreading the gospel of beer: its taste, its texture, and the art of crafting the perfect small batch. Yet in June 2020, when they went live with their online shop, things didn’t go quite as expected. While they’d invested in a range of apps—Shopify® for online sales, HubSpot® to manage customer relationships, and Slack® for internal communications—these apps weren’t well-connected.

The Challenge

Foreach Brewing, a craft beer start-up in Amsterdam, faced challenges when they launched their online shop in June 2020. They had invested in a range of apps including Shopify for online sales, HubSpot to manage customer relationships, and Slack for internal communications. However, these apps were not well-integrated, leading to a lack of centralized data flow. This resulted in the need to carry out many repetitive tasks manually, such as counting labels in the warehouse, compiling reports for the accountant, and constantly checking the website of their shipping partner to track deliveries. The disconnected application landscape meant that the founders of Foreach spent too much time dealing with routine back-office tasks and not enough time focused on growing their business. As a small start-up, they didn't have the means to invest in a full-scale integration platform.

The Solution

Foreach Brewing decided to partner with serviceshift, an Amsterdam-based IT consultancy, which delivered an ideal solution: the Free Forever edition of webMethods.io, Software AG’s powerful cloud-based integration Platform-as-a-Service. As system integration specialists, serviceshift had worked with several other integration platforms. To serviceshift’s founder and director Stefan Lenke, webMethods.io stood out as the best. Not only was it incredibly easy to use, with an intuitive drag-and-drop interface to design, assemble and deploy workflows for apps, it also came with industry-leading developer tools, an architecture that supported multiple users and a sophisticated application orchestration. This made automating business processes—Foreach’s main aim—exceedingly simple. Best of all, with Software AG’s Free Forever edition, enterprises with fewer than 1,000 transactions per month could access it at no cost—with no time limitation. After three months in business, Foreach went live with webMethods.io in August—and implementation was swift. Within a day, serviceshift had workflows to Shopify and HubSpot up and running. It quickly brought six more workflows live—with only a day of implementation time each—and together they made a dramatic difference.

Operational Impact

Today, the applications powering Foreach’s e-commerce platform are seamlessly connected. When a customer places an order, the members of the Foreach team get an instant notification on Slack and can immediately fulfill it.
They also know right away if there’s a problem with a shipment or if inventory’s running low. Gone is the time spent in the warehouse counting boxes, constantly checking whether shipments have arrived, or dealing with the grind of financial reports: Those are generated automatically, too.
In the months ahead, there’s more to come: In addition to its online sales to customers, Foreach sells its beers to restaurants, bars and retail shops, and fulfills those orders manually. Until now, Foreach has managed its online and offline inventories separately Utilizing the powers of webMethods.io, it’s now working to integrate data from its offline sales. This will enable the brewery to create a single, centrally managed supply chain that’s far more efficient—and put it on the path toward becoming a truly connected enterprise. With the confidence its applications are operating in sync, it also plans to introduce a range of new products: new recipes, merchandise and the ability to mix and match varieties in one six pack.

Quantitative Benefit

Implementation of webMethods.io was swift, with workflows to Shopify and HubSpot up and running within a day.
Six more workflows were quickly brought live, each with only a day of implementation time.