A Brewery Was Doubling Its Footprint. First, It Needed to Know If Its Technology Was Ready.
A craft brewery with a strong regional brand and growing national presence was preparing to open a second full-scale production facility. The company ran a broad application portfolio across brewing, supply chain, finance, distribution, and customer operations, supported by a small internal IT team.
Industry: Craft Brewery
Size: ~500 Employees; in the top 5 craft brewers by volume
Ownership: Private
Business Challenge
Opening a second major brewery is not just an operations challenge, it’s also a technology challenge. Nearly every major system the company ran had been built and configured for a single location. Before the new facility could open to support national expansion, leadership needed an honest accounting of what the portfolio could support, what needed to change, and in what order.
The company also faced structural weaknesses that would be amplified by expansion: processes documented only in people's heads, no formal program management capability, a data center without the redundancy needed for distributed operations, and a growing portfolio of in-flight initiatives with no clear governance. Specific risks included:
Supply chain planning tools built for one facility, with no ability to coordinate production or inventory across two sites
ERP and financial systems not configured for multi-site reporting, inventory tracking, or cross-facility transfers
Data center infrastructure with insufficient redundancy and no formal disaster recovery plan
Undocumented tribal knowledge substituting for process documentation, with no reliable way to replicate operations at a new location
Our Approach & Solution
CIO Source conducted a comprehensive IT and Business Process Assessment across twelve functional domains. The team evaluated the full application portfolio system by system, reviewed IT infrastructure and processes, and engaged stakeholders across every major business function from brewing and supply chain to finance, distribution, and HR.
Each area was scored on two dimensions: criticality to the expansion and readiness to support multi-site operations. The composite scores gave leadership a prioritized, defensible view of where risk was concentrated and where investment was most urgent. The engagement concluded with a high-level enterprise architecture and a two-year IT roadmap.
Business Results & Outcomes
Leadership received a system-by-system view of what needed to change before the new facility opened, with clear sequencing and supporting rationale to guide capital allocation
Infrastructure options including colocation and cloud were analyzed and a recommended path was delivered ahead of facility planning decisions
A two-year roadmap established a structured, prioritized agenda across applications, infrastructure, and IT processes, reducing the risk of conflicting investments or missed deadlines
Process documentation gaps and tribal knowledge dependencies were identified with remediation recommendations before they became a two-site operational liability
Executive Takeaway
Expansion amplifies every IT weakness that already exists. CIO Source gave this company a clear view of its technology readiness before the pressure of a second live facility made the gaps impossible to manage.