Oracle Customer Success—United States Distilled Products Company

United States Distilled Products Improves Product Quality and the Customer Experience with Financial Management and Manufacturing Process Automation

With Oracle E-Business Suite Release 12.1.3, we have standardized our business processes across the board, reduced paper use, and improved our manufacturing and quality assurance processes.

— Joan Stevens, Director, Information Technology, United States Distilled Products Company

United States Distilled Products Company (USDP) began bottling in 1981 as a small bottling operation with the objective of producing regional brands for markets in the Midwest. Since its inception, USDP has grown to become a leading bottler, developing a reputation as a company that is focused on service and quality.

USDP produces its own brands of alcoholic products—including its fine line of cordial, spirit, and crème products—and distributes them throughout the United States and several other countries.

Business Challenge

Separate USDP’s financial management processes from its distribution partner’s system to achieve greater independence and financial oversight while eliminating manual data rekeying
Automate business processes—including pricing, quality control, and employee expense approvals—to improve product quality, as well as customer and employee satisfaction

Provide electronic-data interchange (EDI) order-management capabilities to simplify order management for USDP’s liquor distributors
Enable USDP to scale and add functionality to its enterprise resource planning (ERP) system without requiring significant customization

Implemented Oracle E-Business Suite Release 12.1.3—including Oracle Financials and Oracle Process Manufacturing—integrating financial and manufacturing processes to eliminate data rekeying that previously wasted staff time and caused errors in liquor-order fulfillment
Provided workflow notifications to alert employees to financial management and manufacturing tasks that require action—significantly reducing paper use

Enabled customers to place orders through EDI, minimizing the need to hire additional customer service representatives to manually enter liquor orders
Provided barcode scanning capabilities with Oracle Mobile Supply Chain Applications, offering visibility into order and shipping information to enable the warehouse team to place the first shipments closest to the shipping dock for optimal efficiency—ensuring each customer order is shipped within two weeks of order entry
Used Oracle Process Quality to provide visibility into each product lot, providing traceability that would enable USDP to identify each lot’s exact shipping location, in case of a product recall
Ensured accurate pricing by using Oracle Advanced Pricing to charge distributors based on contract price, cost per batch, labor, and overhead
Used Oracle Order Management to enable USDP to put holds on customers as necessary, for example to ensure it does not ship a specific liquor product to an unauthorized state or location—protecting the company from legal ramifications
Used Oracle’s Demantra Demand Management to more easily develop annual sales forecasts based on previous history, enabling the company to plan more effective product launches and ensure that product supply meets demand
Provided the flexibility to add new capabilities as the business requires them—without heavy customization and integration requirements—helping support USDP as it maps out its strategic direction for the future

USDP selected Oracle due to its modern interface and wide range of off-the-shelf functionality. It fit all our requirements.

— Joan Stevens, Director, Information Technology, United States Distilled Products Company

Execution

USDP first implemented Oracle Financials, taking five months to complete the deployment—within budget and ahead of schedule. It then deployed the manufacturing applications, including Oracle Process Manufacturing. Finally, the company implemented Demantra Demand Management and Oracle Advanced Supply Chain Planning.

About United States Distilled Products Company

Headquarters

Princeton, Minnesota, United States

Employees

300

United States Distilled Products Company

Partners

USDP worked with Traust Consulting on the Oracle Financials and Oracle Process Manufacturing implementations. Business & Decision supported the Oracle Advanced Supply Chain Planning implementation. Finally, USDP worked with Inspirage on the Demantra Demand Management and constrained Oracle Advanced Supply Chain Planning deployments.