Rolling hills, green forests, clear water – unspoilt countryside. For centuries, beer has been brewed at Alpirsbacher Klosterbräu Glauner GmbH & Co. KG "from the celebrated Black Forest wate". To this day, the water used for brewing still arrives at the brewhouse untreated and straight from the brewery’s own wells in the nearby Glaswiesen Nature Reserve. High quality raw materials – hops, malt, yeast and water – go into producing the various specialities. This is reflected in one of the tenets of the Glauner family's business philosophy: "No economy without ecology". This principle has been successfully put into practice for four generations.

The family business counts on quality to the same degree in the handling of its financial interests. Corporate Planner has now provided support in the management of the Alpirsbacher Klosterbräu brewery for three years. The budgeting, planning, analysis and reporting software is used across the board in finance, costing and distribution.

 

Once entered – widely used
In the brewery's Finance department, Corporate Planner displays the profit contribution analysis as well as the personnel costs and the sales staff expense accounts. As a result of the many analysis and simulation functions, the entire budgeting process is now considerably more straightforward and can be carried out with greater precision.

 

Katrin S. Glauner, wife of the proprietor and Director of Commerce at Alpirsbacher Klosterbräu, works with the software on a daily basis and takes care of data input. Nowadays, the financial management system is used extensively throughout the company for conducting analyses, in particular by the Personnel department and by the field and in-house sales staff.

 

"Corporate Planner is extremely versatile while having comparatively low acquisition costs. All users find the system easy to operate. A further advantage is that there are no interface problems", Katrin Glauner explains the reasoning behind the decision three years ago to replace the Excel software. At Alpirsbacher Klosterbräu, data are transferred smoothly between the back office system, an AS400-based program peculiar to the industry, and Corporate Planner. Confidence in the new planning tool grew quickly during the implementation and familiarisation period which lasted only three weeks.

 

"Performs well under test conditions" – the same can also be said for the Alpirsbacher Klosterbräu products. The beers from the Black Forest leave nothing to be desired in terms of flavour, according to the adjudication panel of the German Agricultural Society's annual Quality Competition, and they have passed the rigorous tests with flying colours.

 

At Alpirsbacher Klosterbräu, great importance is attributed to data being quick to access. Since Corporate Planner is so flexible, plans can be adjusted and acted on without delay. The time saved literally pays off. Alongside the benefits relating to routine budgeting, analysis and planning activities which have already been mentioned, yet another important effect has been noted: the professional-looking reports which can be individually designed are often highly praised by banks and other business partners. This, in turn, puts the company in a favourable light when it comes to investment projects.

 

Katrin Glauner sums up: "I appreciate above all that the data are available very quickly indeed, and also that the variance analyses are so revealing. The insight they provide is a reliable basis for my decision-making. I can check on budgets and targets at any time and take proactive measures". According to the Director of Commerce, the clear depiction of the company figures in the Corporate Planner tree structure is very useful for clearing up redundant data. To get the most out of the software for the family brewery, Katrin Glauner has become an expert in Corporate Planner issues, having attended several of the CP training seminars on offer (introductory and advanced training and a course in Integrated Financial Planning).

At the annual CP Users' Meeting in September, the new software product CP-Rating caught her eye. It was installed in October, and the company is currently going through the familiarisation phase. Alpirsbacher Klosterbräu thus invests for a sustainable future, not only in nature conservation and the careful utilisation of natural resources, but also in its business management – and this guarantees customers the consistent quality of its products.

The Glauner family has been running the brewery with passionate enthusiasm for over a century. The former Benedictine monastery at Alpirsbach, founded in 1095, lies deep in the heart of the Northern Black Forest. Two wings of the old monastery building were still part of the brewery until 1995. The monastery brewery had been in the Köbel family estate for 200 years after having previously functioned for many years as a cooperative brewery for the Alpirsbach publicans. Carl Glauner purchased the brewery in 1877 and had it back in operation three years later. He accelerated the modernisation of the brewing business and introduced steam power in 1893.

 

His son, Carl Hermann Glauner, took over the company in 1930. The master brewer, who had learnt his craft in Weihenstephan, established an independent water supply for the brewery by buying up the surrounding wells and forest. He wanted to be sure of having absolutely pure water flowing straight from source to brewhouse.

 

In the current fourth generation, Carl Wilfried Glauner set up the Alpirsbach World of Brewing, a visitor centre featuring everything to do with the local beer with a brewery museum attached, a glass-blowing workshop, the Alpirsbach Gallery of Contemporary Art, which his father created, and the Alpirsbach Nature Conservation Project.

 

Today, Alpirsbacher Klosterbräu numbers almost 80 employees in its workforce who produce beers to suit all tastes, ranging from Pilsner and several types of wheat beer to specialist and seasonal varieties such as "bock" and "Christmas beer".