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BIECC

The Beer Industry Electronic Commerce Coalition (BIECC), managed by NBWA and established in 1994, is a working group that strives to maximize the beer industry’s role and common interest pertaining to the implementation and utilization of electronic commerce within the three-tier system. For additional information about the Beer Industry Electronic Commerce Coalition, please contact BIECC Executive Director and NBWA Vice President, State Affairs Dave Christman at dchristman@nbwa.org.

  • Membership

    Members of the BIECC include some of the nation’s leading brewers, importers and distributors. Additionally, the BIECC has added an associate membership level, which includes leading solution providers for the beer industry. Working together, these stakeholders aim to provide a single voice for the beer industry on various electronic commerce initiatives and projects.

  • Objectives

    In carrying out its mission, the BIECC works to:

    • Encourage the utilization of state-of-the-art applications.
    • Enhance the value of the three-tier system.
    • Educate the brewer and the distribution tiers on electronic data interchange (EDI).
    • Represent the beer industry’s interests to selected electronic commerce committees.
    • Monitor electronic commerce developments that impact the beer industry.

  • Focus Areas

    There are four areas in which the BIECC is concentrating to advance electronic commerce:

    • Education: Inform suppliers, distributors and retailers about relevant electronic commerce related issues. Each year the coalition presents an education seminar at NBWA’s Annual Convention. In non-trade show convention years, the BIECC also sponsors the very popular Beer & Bytes luncheon, which allows convention attendees to enjoy lunch and at the same time learn about a new technology in the industry from leading technology providers.
    • Standards: Work to enhance existing industry standards and promote standard business transactions. The coalition has developed industry standards and positions on electronic commerce and other related issues affecting distributors and their trading partners. These have been communicated to standards setting bodies, beer industry professionals and other industry groups. In 2009, the BIECC published an updated version of the Route Accounting System (RAS) Checklist, first produced in 2001.
    • Regulatory: Ensure that state and federal laws are upheld and that the playing field is level.
    • Research: Investigate and review emerging technology for use in the beverage industry. Coalition members address a variety of challenges facing beer distributors. They investigate tools utilized to maximize productivity and automate the beer industry’s sales force, including hand-held devices such as pagers, cellular phones, personal digital assistants (PDAs), portable data collection terminals, truck/car based personal computers (PCs) and global positioning systems (GPS). In recent years the BIECC has also worked with various groups to pilot and investigate emerging technologies like Global Data Synchronization (GDS) and the emergence of Radio Frequency Identification (RFID in the beer industry.

BIECC Master Product Catalog

In February 2022, the BIECC and Syndigo, a leading SaaS product information management and syndication company, announced the opening of access to the Master Product Catalog (MPC) for beer brands. This Catalog houses basic item information and images for all participating brands, as a single source of item information that is freely available to retailers, distributors, third-party solution providers and other industry stakeholders.

The MPC was created as an industry solution for beer brewers, especially smaller suppliers, to provide their product content easily to the recipients who need the information to display and sell the product.

Questions can also be directed to David Christman at dchristman@nbwa.org or Staci Springer at staci.springer@syndigo.com

Benefits of Established eCommerce Tools in the Beer Industry

This new resource acts as a refresher of the benefits and savings that can be realized across the supply chain by more established eCommerce tools like Electronic Data Interchange (EDI) and Electronic Funds Transfer (EFT).

Why Consider Online Ordering?

  • What Solutions Are Available?
  • Retailer Interaction
  • Goal Setting & Analytics
  • Internal Distributor Onboarding

Publications

Electronic Funds Transfer

To learn more about the benefits of Electronic Funds Transfer to both distributors and retailers, be sure to check out the video below. Thank you to Anheuser-Busch InBev and Wil Fischer Companies for their efforts in producing this video.