D&M Winchester Ltd. trail blazes whisky distillery operations with Zoho Creator
"Over time, on Zoho Creator, we've built a completely custom low-code solution for D&M Winchester Ltd., not seen before in the industry. As far as I know, our Zoho Creator applications are the only things in the industry that are so comprehensive."
- Colin Campbell, CTO, D&M Winchester Ltd.
Summary
D&M Winchester Ltd. has engineered a holistic, customized whisky management system on the Zoho Creator platform. This application automates the unique end-to-end operations of D&M Winchester Ltd. It has centralized dashboards that provide insights on casks, spirit production, all whisky operations, bottling, and distribution.
The company
D&M Winchester Ltd. provides turn-key services for whisky management, from sourcing whisky to storing and bottling, labeling, branding, and distribution. It provides holistic cask monitoring services that help provide analytical reporting of the spirit. Cask management at D&M Winchester Ltd. extends to the point of sourcing the right high-quality casks for whisky storage, with complete traceability, which is an industry requirement. Complete transparency of the operations and processes carried out in conjunction with live reporting in the customer portal sets the company apart from others in the industry.
The challenge
Before the application was built with Zoho Creator, the administrative aspects of whisky operations were challenging. Operations were recorded on written pieces of paper, which ultimately led to inefficiencies.
"The business was significantly smaller prior to the Zoho Creator integration; the operations team would use handwritten notes to record information. At that time, this information was then transferred to Excel as a way of managing cask stock. This was laborious and time consuming."
- Colin Campbell,CTO, D&M Winchester Ltd.
The solution: Holistic bespoke whisky and cask management system
As a solution, the company built four dashboards using Zoho Creator.
The main dashboard
The main dashboard displays whisky cask storage numbers sorted by casks in malt barns, cask regauge requests, bottling details, staff schedules, purchase orders (POs), and staff leave management.
The operations dashboard
The operations dashboard has—besides panels for cask monitoring—an embedded operations calendar that displays a color-coded timeline of inbound and outbound requests for whisky casks and other deliveries and shipments.
The director's dashboard
The director's dashboard shows staff schedules, purchase orders (POs) awaiting approvals, and staff leaves. It also shows the sampling requests, as well as the regauge requests and reracks for all whisky casks. What's more, it also displays a count of total whisky bottles manufactured in the current year alongside the total projects undertaken. The director's dashboard has two embedded calendars, one for global events and the other named "Bottling planner."
The key metrics dashboard
The company has engineered a key metrics dashboard. It shows various bar graphs and scatter plots of casks stored at various locations. It shows the available empty wood that can be used for rerack operations and cask filling. It also shows the sample, regauge and rerack turnaround times for the previous rolling 30 days and 12 month periods.
"The dashboards are very useful. They offer a great visual indication as to how operations are progressing across the organization. With the live reporting of key metrics, we can take preemptive actions to improve efficiencies in a timely way allowing us to maintain high levels of customer service."
- Colin Campbell,CTO, D&M Winchester Ltd.
The company has engineered a customer management portal: A dedicated portal for customers to access their cask information.
Aside from this portal and the operations calendar, the company has built several other modules with Zoho Creator.
- A casks module to manage the entire lifecycle of a cask.
- A messages module to manage inbound and outbound messages.
- A bottling request module to oversee the complete management of all bottling projects.
- A module for managing whisky samples, cask regauges, and the reracking of casks after they've been moved.
- A module for managing cask rentals, which is integrated with Zoho Books.
- A dry goods stock control module that is integrated with the bottling module.
"Operationally and administratively, the needs of the business are both complex and highly regulated. Each stakeholder on site needs to know about each cask and what's happening with it: the data about the cask, such as how much spirit is in it, how many litres of alcohol is in the spirit, and so on. The aggregated data is exported into a Zoho Creator report which we then submit to our tax department for processing."
- Colin Campbell,CTO, D&M Winchester Ltd.
Moreover, the company firmly believes that the app built on Zoho Creator is one-of-a-kind in the industry today.
"The key thing here is how well integrated all the elements are. Over time, we've built a really custom application, very tailored for what we need, and there isn't anything in the industry currently that does that to the extent that this application does. There are one or two big applications out there that you can purchase off the shelf and they cover some elements of it but this currently, as far as I know, is the only thing in the industry that is so comprehensive and feature-rich. It would be very challenging to run our business without Zoho Creator at its core."
- Colin Campbell,CTO, D&M Winchester Ltd.
Looking forward
The company is broadening its whisky service offerings as it continues to gain market traction globally, fueled by Zoho Creator applications.
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What is Zoho Creator?
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