Planning for the Next Decade: Tackling Long-Term Aging Challenges in Spirits with Anaplan

Mastering long-term planning is a key challenge for managing complex aging cycles and ensuring product availability. With Anaplan, spirits producers can now anticipate needs years in advance, optimize inventory, and secure sustainable growth in a demanding market.

Long-Term Aging: A Defining Feature of the Spirits Industry

Unlike many sectors, the production of spirits like cognac, whisky, or armagnac depends on maturation cycles that can stretch over many years—sometimes more than a decade. This characteristic demands rigorous planning and foresight, as decisions made today directly impact product availability 5, 10, or even 15 years from now.

This long-term horizon adds layers of complexity to managing inventory, procurement, and capital investment. Producers must navigate a range of constraints: limited cellar capacity, natural losses from evaporation, evolving regulations, and fluctuating global demand.

Planning Ahead: A Major Challenge for Spirits Houses

Long-term planning isn’t just about extending traditional planning tools—it requires accounting for:

• Seasonality and agricultural cycles: The quality and quantity of raw materials (grapes, grains) vary with harvests and climate conditions.
• Physical constraints: Aging takes time, and storage space is limited. Natural evaporation—the “angel’s share”—reduces volume over time.
• Market uncertainty: Consumer trends change, regulations evolve, and export markets can be unpredictable.
• Complex blending processes: Spirits often involve intricate blends, requiring precise lot tracking and advanced management.

These factors make traditional planning tools—typically spreadsheets and static assumptions—insufficient for ensuring operational performance and responsiveness.

Anaplan: A Long-Term Planning Solution for the Spirits Industry

Anaplan stands out for its ability to model complex scenarios and consolidate diverse data sets into a single, unified platform. For spirits producers, this enables:

• A consolidated, real-time view: All data—inventory, sales, aging capacity, and demand forecasts—is centralized and continuously updated.
• Scenario modeling: Teams can simulate the impact of poor harvests, unexpected demand surges, or regulatory shifts, and adjust plans accordingly.
• Integrated aging cycle management: Anaplan accounts for each product’s specific aging duration, natural losses, and storage constraints to enable precise inventory control.
• Cross-functional alignment: Production, finance, sales, and logistics work from a shared platform, enhancing collaboration and accelerating decision-making.

Secured Growth and Optimized Resources

With long-term planning powered by Anaplan, spirits houses can:

• Prevent stockouts of strategic products by accurately forecasting volumes to place into aging.
• Reduce costly overstocks and make the best use of cellar space, minimizing storage and evaporation-related losses.
• Strategically guide investments in production and storage infrastructure with clear visibility into future needs.
• Enhance resilience through scenario simulation, enabling swift, informed reactions to market changes.

Beyond Plans: Experts in Long-Term Planning Transformation

Technology alone is not enough—the success of these projects relies on the right support. With deep industry expertise and certified Anaplan knowledge, Beyond Plans supports spirits producers with:

• Assessing existing processes and identifying specific planning needs.
• Designing tailored planning models that incorporate long-term aging dynamics.
• Training teams and managing change to ensure successful adoption.
• Continuously monitoring and optimizing implemented solutions.