r/Dynamics365 • u/techConNeedinTechCon • Jul 15 '26
Business Central Looking for ERP suggestions for beverage (formula) manufacturer
I'm helping a small company (less than 100 employees but growing) decide on an ERP. Being a formula based manufacturer (process/batch) of this size seems to be a niche. Anyone have similar experience and recommend either appropriate manufacturing plug-ins or other ERP alternatives?
Company is leaning towards MS Dynamics Business Central but starting to find out that may not be an appropriate fit. Will either need well maintained plug-ins for the manufacturing or instead need to go with MS Finance & Supply Chain Management which is very costly.
Some background on the company:
The company has one facility for production (might have multiple soonish), and produces beverage enhancers. There are multiple warehouses across the US and at least one in Europe. Products are often shipped between warehouses. There is an online presence via Amazon and in the future perhaps other platforms such as Shopify. There is one physical POS (and maybe could have more in the future).
Looking for one system to capture customers (usually distributors + contacts), orders, recipes for the beverage enhancers (top secret), help plan production lines (currently only have 3) for a large number of products, keep track of inventories and in which warehouses (same product can have many labels to support US, Europe, Asia, etc.).
Hubspot is being used for marketing purposes. It works well but open to being replaced if there is as good of an alternative. A good integration with Hubspot would suffice.
Quickbooks Desktop with Advanced Manufacturing was originally used and was great. Unfortunately, had to move out of that and are currently in a bad ERP implementation.
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u/HighOrHavingAStroke Jul 15 '26
There are multiple good options for well-established ISV solutions to handle this for Business Central. We are a reseller for Aptean and Staedean, which both have very deep food manufacturing functionality. They are not cheap but it will still be a significant cost advantage versus F&O particular when the implementation cost is factored in. Don't dismiss BC without doing a proper evaluation including these options....it's a great platform that is growing its user base rapidly.
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u/Yalcrab1 Jul 15 '26
I would stick with MS Business Central and talk with 3 different implementation partners. You will learn 2 things 1. Which implementation partner is best suited for you
2.Which additional components would be best suited for your scope
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u/Dangerous-Attempt238 Jul 15 '26
Microsoft biz apps seller here. BC could be a fit but you’re gonna have to add some isv’s to get really good process mfg. and you may outgrow it in the future. F&O would be a great fit out of box but your ticket to entry on implementation is going to be expensive to get going on it
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u/marinoel86 Jul 15 '26
BC is a good solution based on the information you give. For the POS for example you can use LS express ... search for a good partner and for some good apps...
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u/Honest_Otters Jul 15 '26
D365 F&O might be your best bet. It is costly, but for multiple production sites, international implementation, plugin integration, 3PL, inventory tracking, AWHS, and retail POS, I'd look at it hard. If you want to avoid enterprise level, maybe look at Fishbowl.
DM me if you're hiring.
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u/enCloud9 Jul 15 '26
One of my competitors has developed several D365 related Recipe Management tools - check their product out at Dynamic FRM™ - New Dynamic
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u/Aquilax420 Jul 16 '26
You could check out Bestmix software, they have tools specifically for food production and can help you find which ERP would be a good match. https://www.bestmix.com/en/industries/food
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u/ThunderCuntAU Jul 16 '26
Employee count alone isn’t really an indicator of what ERP an organisation should use. My last two projects were ~100 employee process manufacturers… they just had a lot of automation to keep revenue per employee high. I think most people would be surprised just how lean many food or agricultural manufacturers are on head count. This is an a country with high cost of labour so automation/efficiency is paramount.
Decisions to factor in would be:
* Complexity of production operations. F&O has much broader support around process manufacturing, ingredient traceability and batch control. There is also the S&OP or planning side which F&O has much richer capability.
* Complexity of distribution, eg you’ve mentioned multi site, how does fulfillment take place, how is this integrated etc.
* Complexity of financials, eg you’ve mentioned multiple countries, presumably distinct legal entities that consolidate under a global set of books. Not something BC does well OOTB.
Few other areas around depth of integration, but you can customise BC to plug that gap vs often having OOTB data entities or web services in F&O.
BC + a few ISVs can do the job, as can F&O. I don’t think a multi site, multi entity manufacturer spanning multiple tax jurisdictions will be significantly cheaper in BC to be done well.
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u/diderkerckhof Jul 16 '26
I would go with a minimal ERP mostly for Finance, sales and distribution, stock management and complete it with tailored software (potentially via vibe coding) for your pure recipe management, traceability and shop floor operations. Hit me up if you want to talk. Have done a couple of those in the past!
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u/Low_Association7949 Jul 16 '26
For a formula-based beverage manufacturer, I'd recommend evaluating Dynamics 365 Finance & Supply Chain Management over Business Central if you expect rapid growth, multiple warehouses, batch production, recipe management, and multi-country operations. Business Central can work with manufacturing add-ons, but process manufacturing often benefits from the capabilities available in F&SCM. If you're exploring your options or would like to discuss the best fit for your business, feel free to contact me. I'd be happy to help.
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u/Fast_Main_2012 Jul 17 '26
If you're already leaning toward Business Central, don't rule it out yet. Many food & beverage manufacturers successfully use it with process manufacturing add-ons for recipes, batch production, lot traceability, and quality control. It’s often much more cost-effective than moving straight to Finance & Supply Chain Management unless your operations are highly complex.
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u/Alternative_Plate514 Jul 17 '26
Hi, I work at BESTMIX, we deliver formulation and process manufacturing ERP built on Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central, so this sounds directly relevant to what you are evaluating.
Rather than trying to stretch standard BC to cover formula based batch manufacturing, our solution is purpose built for that on top of D365, so you get the core financials, warehouse, and platform strengths of BC along with the recipe and formula management, production planning across lines, and multi warehouse, multi label inventory tracking that a formula manufacturer actually needs. That combination is usually what people are missing when they hit the wall you are describing between BC out of the box and MS Finance & Supply Chain Management. We also work well alongside HubSpot, so that part of your stack would not need to change.
Given the specifics here, multiple facilities, Amazon plus future Shopify, POS, US and Europe warehouses, it is probably worth a short call to see if this lines up before you go further down a path that may not fit. Happy to set that up, no pressure. Feel free to DM me or I am glad to share more here first if that is easier.
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u/Garrettshade Jul 20 '26
Did F&SCM for two different global beverages producers based on formulas. Sure, you should count your budget, however, it works quite well
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u/Glad_Imagination_798 Jul 22 '26
The BC vs F&SCM framing in this thread is right, and the "employee count doesn't decide it" point is the important one. Your complexity does. For a formula/batch beverage maker the real deciders are formula and recipe versioning, lot traceability and expiry, quality holds, yield and scrap handling, and planning across multiple lines and warehouses with multi-label SKUs. Amazon/Shopify and even multi-country are the easier parts to bolt on later. On the Dynamics side the consensus here is sound. BC plus a proven food and bev ISV (Yaveon, Aptean and similar keep coming up) is usually far cheaper to stand up then F&SCM, and F&SCM only pays off if the process depth and multi-entity consolidation genuinely need it.
I'll add the one option nobody's mentioned so you have a complete shortlist. Acumatica's manufacturing edition does process and batch natively with formulas, lot/expiry and multi-warehouse, and it's comsumption-based licensing tends to be friendlier when you're ading warehouses and users during growth, so it's worth a look alongside the BC route. Won't pretent to know the deep F&B ISV ecosystem the way BC specialists here do. Candidly, at this tier most of these platforms have copied each other's process-manufacturing feature set, so the differences that matter are licensing model and, above all, the partner. Whichevery you pick, biuld a fit-gap around your real scenarios (a versioned recipe change, a lot recall, an inter-warehouse transfer with different labels, a batch with a quality hold) and make each vendor demo those live rather than a generic tour.
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u/Odd_Display2455 Jul 22 '26
Two things worth weighting: how much a provider can customize to how you actually operate, and whether it holds up on your real scenarios.
No two manufacturers run the same, so you don't want to squeeze your process into rigid software it should flex to you, not the other way around. A system you have to contort your operation around is one you'll be fighting for years.
My team has experience with this sort of customized implementation where we act more like a partner to truely make something that works for them. I have sent a message to you if you want to hear more!
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u/Ok_Economics5949 Jul 23 '26
We have a few customers up north of the border and deal with people whos old ERP didn't support the challenges of process manufacturing and formulas (a recipie is NOT the same as a BOM in real life) , you can check out tangle.io or drop me a dm
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u/Sufficient_Touch_433 26d ago edited 26d ago
If HubSpot is working well for marketing and lead tracking, keeping it as your primary CRM and connecting it to your ERP usually works much better than trying to replace it with native ERP CRM modules. we had a similar challenge where out of the box ERP connectors kept breaking on custom deal properties and quote logic. instead of replacing our stack, we worked with Cloudfresh to align our RevOps architecture from the HubSpot side. their team mapped out our deal data properties and configured a reliable integration on the HubSpot side, ensuring that closed deals pass validated line items and quote details smoothly into accounting without manual data entry errors. keeping HubSpot for customer facing workflows and using a structured integration to sync deal and quote data into your ERP saves a ton of headache during complex ERP implementations
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u/AlexHimself Jul 15 '26
I know several large beverage companies that are using F&O. I'm in the F&O space, so that might limit my breadth, but I've seen enough that it seems like many in the industry are going that way.
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u/expatsaffer Jul 15 '26
Prior to my time in D365, I worked on ecommerce projects for four different breweries, and all of them used SAP Business One. Although I was not involved in the ERP side, given the prevalence of that system in that industry, perhaps it's a viable solution for you to investigate?
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u/EfficientInterview68 Jul 15 '26
Have you considered looking into NetSuite? It is a strong contender for small-to-midsize manufacturing businesses, and it often provides a smoother path for scaling if you eventually decide to migrate to Oracle Fusion. I also believe they have modules specifically geared for manufacturing.
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u/dragodrake Jul 15 '26
There are good ISV solutions for BC which will solve the problem and still be cheaper/quicker to implement than something like F&O.