The Royal Wine Corporation is a producer, importer and the world’s largest distributor of upscale kosher wines, liquors, spirits, grape juices and food products. For almost 50 years, Royal Wine has been owned and operated in the United States by the Herzog family, whose winemaking roots date back eight generations to 19th century Czechoslovakia.

Today, Royal Wine has earned a reputation in the kosher food and beverage industry as the leader in modern production methods, innovative packaging and marketing. Because of family tradition, all Royal Wine products are certified kosher and therefore prepared in adherence to the highest standards of cleanliness and purity, requiring meticulous care and pristine winemaking conditions. As the company grows, Royal Wine remains committed to the vision of Eugene Herzog and to producing fine kosher wine with a heritage of perfection.

The Challenge

Over the years, as the demand for kosher-certified wines, spirits and other beverages has increased, Royal Wine experienced rapid growth. Keeping pace with increased sales, production and distribution demands was increasingly challenging under the company’s old, proprietary Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) system.

While Royal Wine was somewhat satisfied with the core accounting processes of their old system, it did not provide essential real-time information and automation. Without up-to-theminute data, the outside sales team was hampered by a laptop-based remote ordering process that failed to deliver real time pricing, inventory or customer data and regularly dropped orders during peak holiday sales periods. Managers manually transferred data to spreadsheets for analysis, customer and vendor communications and critical tax reporting. Handling timely receipts of product, vintage control, tasting notes and company wide product availability data became increasingly challenging as distribution requirements increased. There was no effective means by which to manage by exception, resulting in time consuming and inefficient daily audits. As a result, employees spent valuable time and human resources each month managing inefficient business operations.

Royal Wine specifically looked for a robust business and financial management solution that would provide real-time information and automation, handle multifaceted production and distribution requirements, plus keep stride with increasing sales demand. With the holiday season quickly approaching and high sales volumes anticipated, completing the entire conversion and implementation within an eight month time-frame was essential.

The Solution

To resolve these issues, Royal Wine turned to MIBAR.net, an AccountMate Business Partner with a well-deserved reputation for providing enterprise-wide business solutions. Following MIBAR’s recommendation, Royal Wine implemented AccountMate’s SQL product due to the program scalability and open architecture to accommodate their expansive business.

With real-time knowledge and information available, company employees can access current customer and vendor account information, check inventory availability at multiple warehouses and verify incoming orders. Employees can easily check customer account holds, vendor delivery status and inventory levels which expedites the entire sales process from start to finish. Equipping the sales team with up-to-the-minute knowledge allows them to quickly place orders, respond to inquiries and resolve discrepancies.

AccountMate’s standard drill down capability provides account detail and immediate access to sales orders, transactional reports, invoices and other valuable financial information such as sales-to-date, open order data, or balances due. All sales representatives can provide reliable and timely information instantly, all without having to leave their Contact Manager.

The next step in the company’s technology overhaul addressed essential processing requirements so that customer pricing, remote order processing and import trafficking could be fully realized. With the availability of source code, MIBAR.net customized AccountMate logic to solve three of its most complicated business processes:

1. Customer pricing was developed to auto-generate accurate prices. With a discount structure dependent on many factors, customer pricing is based on quantity break point that triggers a discount in either a percent or dollar value off of list price. And a cumulative discount based on product class can be assigned to customers, customer groups and territory.
   
   
2. Remote order processing was developed so that all enhancements made to their back office system could be made into a mobile solution enabling the sales team to submit, save and store orders as they were entered to a laptop and transmitted back to the home office.
   
   
3. Import trafficking was developed so that Royal Wine could have greater visibility to track the movement of product as it left the country of origin. This would include loading multiple purchase orders into containers, tracking receipts by container, accumulation of costs by container and maintaining a variety of dates and ID numbers associated with the importation of wine.

Royal Wine also needed a data transfer solution to automate the volume of data transferred to spreadsheets for analysis, communication and reporting. With AccountMate’s award-winning program design, adding on industry-specific programs to solve sales support and distribution challenges is a seamless integration. Business Alerts is a real-time data monitoring agent that sends email alerts and reports to predefined users based on event driven based activities within their business. With Business Alerts, company managers can react to changing business conditions as they occur, allowing for proactive management of key business metrics that enable faster decision making.

The Results

After working with MIBAR.net to solve their business challenges, Royal Wine is thoroughly satisfied. The company has up-to-date pricing and inventory, comprehensive sales reporting filtered by sales representatives and they have a reliable method to capture customer orders without dedicated on-line internet access. With AccountMate business solutions, Royal processes orders 30% faster and they have increased order volume by 10% without adding employees.

Not only does AccountMate provide a robust business solution which scales to their considerable sales, production and distribution volumes, but company employees quickly learned to manage the system with ease and effectively use it on a daily basis. The installation was completed within eight months and Royal Wine was able to keep pace with the peak holiday sales period without popping a cork.

“With the new AccountMate implementation and the MIBAR Team on our side, we can focus on what we do best: bringing Herzog Wines and Kedem Grape Juice to America’s holiday tables,” says Efrom Schnoll, C.I.O., Royal Wines.

About Royal Wine Corporation

The Royal Wine Corporation is the largest producer, importer and distributor of kosher-certified wines in the world. Founded in 1848, the company has a reputation in the wine and beverage industry as the leader in modern production methods, innovative packaging and marketing. Royal Wine can be reached at (805) 983-1560 (Herzog Wine Cellars), (845) 236-4000 (Kedem Winery) or at www.royalwines.com.

About MIBAR.net

MIBAR.net is recognized as one of the tri-state areas leading software service providers, serving New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and Connecticut. With a tenured staff of experienced and dedicated professionals, MIBAR.net is uniquely qualified to provide middle market business with the software and services that are required to effectively compete in today's complex business environment. MIBAR.net can be reached at (888) OK-MIBAR (656-4227) or at www.MIBAR.net.

About AccountMate Software Corporation

Founded in 1984, AccountMate develops and markets fully modifiable business accounting software. Systems range from single user versions to those that support hundreds of users simultaneously. AccountMate software is distributed exclusively through a worldwide channel of authorized solution providers. AccountMate can be reached at (800) 877-8896 or at www.accountmate.com