How to Automate VIP

VIP sits between the brewery and the bar

VIP, still known to plenty of people as Vermont Information Processing, makes software for the beverage business. Suppliers, distributors and retailers all use some part of it, which is unusual: most vertical software sits on one side of a supply chain.

For a distributor it is the whole operation. Beverage is the route accounting system, holding financials and inventory alongside the routes. BizStride handles routing and logistics. EasyPick directs the pick in the warehouse, Truck Loading builds the load, and VIP Delivery puts the last mile in a driver's hand. OrderStream forecasts what to buy. KARMA tracks what the field reps are doing. iDIG turns the whole thing into analytics.

Everything a distributor sells passes through it: every case, every keg, every bottle, on its way from a brand to a bar, a supermarket or a bottle shop. The three-tier system in the United States makes that middle step a legal requirement, not a choice, and the licences that permit it are the business.

Each brand on the truck brings its own paperwork

A distributor of any size carries dozens of brands, and every one of those suppliers is a separate relationship with its own website.

Each wants its depletions reported, on its own schedule, in its own shape. Each runs promotions settled later as chargebacks and deductions, and someone in accounts works out which order each one came from. Territory and brand registrations expire on dates held at a state agency, not in the warehouse. Excise returns are due whether or not anybody looked at the calendar. Chain accounts have vendor portals that must agree with what the truck said it delivered.

All of that is one or two people in an office, opening sites in tabs, copying figures into a spreadsheet, and hoping nothing slipped. It works until somebody is off, and then the first sign of trouble is a deduction nobody disputed in time.

VIP has the distributor's own operation covered

Within the distributor's own four walls there is very little left to automate, and it is worth being precise about how much ground that covers.

Beverage brings route accounting, financials and inventory into one source of truth, so the order, the stock and the ledger are the same numbers. BizStride works out how the fleet should run. OrderStream applies demand planning algorithms so buying is a forecast rather than a guess. EasyPick directs pickers through the warehouse in a browser, Truck Loading lays out the load, and VIP Delivery handles proof of delivery on the road. KARMA records every sales task, survey and account detail a rep touches. CCM centralises chain communication, authorisations and execution tracking. Connect is the ecommerce front a retailer places its order through, and VIPPAY collects on the route.

That is a complete picture of the distributor's own operation, and genuinely the hard part solved.

It is also, by definition, the distributor's own operation. The supplier's portal belongs to the supplier. The chain retailer's vendor site belongs to the retailer. The licensing and excise systems belong to a state. None of them will be adding an integration for you.

A distributor can see past its own dock doors

Give the office something that can open those sites every morning, and the reporting calendar stops being a person's memory.

Every supplier portal checked on the day its report is due, with the numbers pulled from the route accounting system and the submission prepared. Chargebacks and deductions collected off each supplier's site and matched back to the order and invoice they belong to, so the ones with no explanation are visible while there is still a dispute window.

Licence, brand registration and territory dates read from the state site that holds them, raised months out rather than the week a renewal lapses. Chain vendor portals compared with the delivery record, so a short shipment is queried while the store still remembers it. What a chain is charging for your brands today, taken from its own shelf pages, next to the price you set.

None of it requires a supplier to build anything or an EDI feed to be agreed. Those sites already render in a browser.

Keep the boundary at anything that commits the business. Reading, comparing and listing can run unattended overnight. Filing a return, disputing a deduction, placing an order or messaging a chain buyer is prepared and left for a person, because each of those is a document with your name on it.

An agent can work the sites the route never reaches

Nothing in that list needs judgement about beer. It needs somebody who will log into each of those sites in a fixed order and write down what it says, every week.

WebRun is an AI agent that works a real Chrome browser, signed in as your office is. It opens the supplier portal, the chain's vendor site or the state licence lookup, reads what is on the screen, and puts it into a sheet, a message or a prepared submission.

It runs on your schedule in your own private environment, and a workflow can be locked to a named list of domains. You can watch a run and stop it. Anything that files, orders or pays drafts and waits.

Each workflow below names the sites it opens and the figures it moves.