How Good Drinks Australia Replaced Manual Workarounds With a B2B Platform Built for Beverage Distribution
Customer Story
Food and Beverage Distribution
NetSuite
Australia
How Good Drinks Australia Replaced Manual Workarounds With a B2B Platform
Built for Beverage Distribution
When NetSuite’s native ecommerce module could no longer handle complex pricing, multi-region freight and loyalty programme logic at scale, Good Drinks needed a platform that understood their industry. Cloudfy delivered exactly that.
Company
Good Drinks Australia
Leading independent brewer and distributor
ERP Integration
NetSuite
Real-time sync, no middleware
Cloudfy Products
3 Products
Portal · Sales Rep App · Customer App
Key Outcome
Manual effort eliminated
Pricing, freight and loyalty now fully automated
The Business
One of Australia's Leading Independent Brewers
Good Drinks Australia supplies pubs, restaurants, retailers and distributors across every state and territory, with a portfolio spanning craft ales, premium lagers and ready-to-drink ranges. As their trade business grew, so did the complexity of managing it.
Their trade customers carry different pricing agreements. Promotions run on seasonal cycles. Freight rules vary by state, territory, warehouse and third-party logistics partner. Their loyalty programme, GaugeBucks, has to calculate points correctly at the moment of ordering and reconcile accurately against NetSuite’s financial records.
Their previous platform, NetSuite’s native ecommerce module, was built for standard use cases. Good Drinks’ operation is anything but standard.
Products Used
B2B Ecommerce Portal
Personalised trade portal with account-specific pricing, catalogues and self-service ordering
Customer Ordering App
Mobile ordering for trade buyers with real-time stock and account visibility
Sales Rep App
Field sales ordering on behalf of customers, with full pricing and catalogue logic applied
NetSuite Integration
The Challenge
A Platform Designed for Simplicity in a Business That Runs on Complexity
NetSuite’s native module could not accommodate the level of commercial variation Good Drinks required. Every order carried the risk of a pricing error, a freight miscalculation or a loyalty point misalignment.
Complex pricing and discount rules
Multiple price lists, customer-specific rates and promotional structures that needed to sync with NetSuite in real time. Every order carried the risk of a pricing error that staff had to manually catch and correct.
Multi-region freight logic
Freight rules in Australian beverage distribution vary by state, territory, warehouse and 3PL partner. The native module could not handle this level of variation, so freight was frequently miscalculated and corrected downstream.
Loyalty programme misalignment
GaugeBucks and other incentives needed accurate point calculation at checkout and reliable reconciliation with NetSuite tax and financial records. Manual correction was the norm, not the exception.
Operational overhead on every order
The combination of pricing checks, freight corrections and loyalty reconciliation consumed significant staff time on tasks that should never require human intervention. The team was firefighting instead of growing the business.
A customer portal that fell short of trade expectations
The existing portal offered limited self-service. Trade buyers could not see real-time stock, retrieve invoices easily or place orders with confidence that the price shown was correct for their account.
"What makes this project so rewarding is seeing how much time and manual effort we have been able to return to the Good Drinks team. When a business moves from workarounds to a platform that actually fits their operation, the impact is immediate."
Simon Hartley
Managing Director, Cloudfy
The core problem
Good Drinks did not need a better website. They needed a platform that understood the real operational complexity of beverage distribution at scale: personalised pricing, multi-region freight, loyalty automation and deep ERP integration. NetSuite’s native module was never built for that. Cloudfy was.
Why Cloudfy
The Shortlist Was Clear. The Decision Was Straightforward.
Good Drinks evaluated their options carefully before committing. Six factors made Cloudfy the clear choice over every alternative platform considered.
Proven NetSuite integration
Cloudfy’s NetSuite connector is a deep, pre-built integration that handles real-time sync for pricing, promotions, inventory, loyalty points and freight. No custom development. No fragile middleware. Good Drinks’ entire commercial logic lives in NetSuite, and Cloudfy respects it completely.
Beverage sector track record
Cloudfy’s experience with major beverage brands, including Heineken, meant that the platform had already solved the specific challenges Good Drinks faced. They were not asking Cloudfy to figure out beverage distribution. The platform already understood it.
Multi-region freight capability
Cloudfy’s freight logic engine could accommodate state-by-state and warehouse-specific rules that Australian beverage distribution demands. This was a capability gap in every other platform evaluated during the selection process.
A complete field sales toolkit
Good Drinks needed more than a web portal. Their field team needed a mobile app to place orders during venue visits. Cloudfy’s Sales Rep App and Customer Ordering App were included as standard, not sold as expensive add-ons.
Built to scale with the portfolio
As Good Drinks continues to grow its brand portfolio and distribution network, they needed a platform that could handle new warehouses, new ranges and new promotional structures without a rebuild. Cloudfy’s architecture is built for exactly that kind of expansion.
ERP-first, not frontend-first
Cloudfy does not try to replicate or override ERP logic. It exposes what already exists in NetSuite, making it available online. For a business whose commercial rules are as complex as Good Drinks’, this distinction matters enormously.
The Solution
A B2B Ordering Platform Built Around How Good Drinks Actually Trades
Cloudfy delivered a phased implementation focused on eliminating every point of manual intervention in the order journey. Each capability was configured to reflect Good Drinks’ real operational rules, not a generic template.
Real-Time NetSuite Integration — Every Order, Every Time
Every price list, promotional structure, loyalty point balance and freight rule now syncs in real time between Cloudfy and NetSuite. When a trade buyer logs in, they see their correct, personalised pricing immediately. When they place an order, the freight cost is calculated accurately based on their location, account and originating warehouse.
- Customer-specific pricing pulled directly from NetSuite price lists
- Promotional structures applied automatically at checkout
- GaugeBucks calculated in real time and reconciled with NetSuite financials
- Inventory levels live across all warehouse locations
- Zero manual pricing checks or freight corrections required
Personalised B2B Portal — Every Customer Sees Their Own Experience
Each trade buyer logs into a portal built entirely around their account: their pricing, their eligible products, their order history, their invoices and their GaugeBucks balance. A pub in Queensland sees the products available in their state, at their negotiated rate, with freight pre-calculated.
- Account-specific catalogues: customers see only what they are entitled to buy
- Real-time stock visibility and accurate delivery estimates
- One-click reorder from full order history
- Invoice access and account management without contacting the team
- 24/7 ordering without any dependency on office hours
Multi-Region Freight Logic — Configured to Match Real Operations
Australian beverage distribution does not follow a single freight model. Cloudfy’s freight engine was configured to handle the full complexity of Good Drinks’ shipping rules: state-based pricing, warehouse allocation, 3PL partner logic and account-specific exceptions.
- State and territory-specific freight rates applied automatically at checkout
- Warehouse selection logic routes orders to the optimal despatch point
- Third-party logistics partner rates integrated into the calculation engine
- Account-specific freight exceptions honoured without manual override
- Zero downstream freight corrections since go-live
Before and After
The Transformation at a Glance
This is what changed when Good Drinks moved from NetSuite’s native module to Cloudfy Pro.
| Area | Before Cloudfy | After Cloudfy |
|---|---|---|
| Pricing accuracy | ✗Manual checks required on every order. Errors caught downstream by staff. | ✓Real-time sync from NetSuite. Correct pricing shown to every customer, every time. |
| Freight calculation | ✗Frequent miscalculations corrected manually. Inconsistent experience for customers by state. | ✓Fully automated by state, warehouse and account. No manual corrections since go-live. |
| GaugeBucks loyalty | ✗Manual reconciliation between ecommerce and NetSuite. Prone to misalignment and customer complaints. | ✓Calculated automatically at checkout. Reconciles with NetSuite financials in real time. |
| Customer self-service | ✗Limited portal. Customers called to check pricing, stock and invoices. Dependent on office hours. | ✓Full self-service 24/7. Account-specific pricing, real-time stock, invoices and order history all visible. |
| Field sales ordering | ✗Orders taken manually during venue visits and re-entered by the team. | ✓Sales Rep App places orders on behalf of customers with full NetSuite logic applied instantly. |
| Staff time on corrections | ✗Significant daily overhead on pricing, freight and loyalty reconciliation tasks. | ✓Automated processes eliminated the need for manual intervention across all three areas. |
| Platform scalability | ✗Limitations became more acute as order volume and portfolio complexity grew. | ✓Phased roadmap in place. New capabilities being added as the business grows, with no rebuild required. |
“Since moving to Cloudfy, we’ve automated a significant portion of our order processing, saving hours of manual work each week. This has allowed our team to focus on delivering a better experience for our customers while reducing errors across the board. We can now scale our operations with confidence, knowing our systems support our growth rather than slow it down.”
Good Drinks Australia
Results
The Impact on Good Drinks' Operation
The core digital ordering experience is already transformed. Cloudfy has eliminated the manual overhead that was holding the team back and given trade customers a portal they can trust.
24/7
Trade ordering available across all states and territories
Real-time
0
What the team can now do differently
Staff focus on growth, not correction
The time previously spent checking pricing, correcting freight and reconciling loyalty points has been returned to the Good Drinks team. That capacity is now available for customer relationships and commercial development.
Trade customers place orders with confidence
Every buyer now sees their correct, account-specific pricing at all times. The trust issue that existed with the previous platform has been resolved at the source, not patched by staff.
Field sales team orders on the move
The Sales Rep App means Good Drinks’ field team can place orders during venue visits with full pricing and stock logic applied. Orders flow directly into NetSuite without re-entry.
What comes next: the roadmap
Advanced delivery rule development
Extended freight logic for new routes, new 3PL partnerships and emerging delivery requirements as the portfolio expands.
Returns and voucher management
Customers will be able to manage returns and apply voucher codes directly through the portal, further reducing inbound calls to the team.
Extended discount and promotional logic
As the product portfolio grows, more complex promotional structures will be configured within Cloudfy and synced automatically with NetSuite.
Customer mobile app
A dedicated mobile app for trade buyers, enabling ordering from anywhere with barcode scanning and full account visibility on-device.
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Is Your B2B Platform Holding Your Operation Back?
If your team is spending time correcting pricing errors, patching freight calculations or manually processing orders that should flow automatically, we should talk. Book a personalised consultation and we will show you exactly what Cloudfy does for businesses like yours.