An alcoholic and soft drinks manufacturer faced a dangerous disconnect. Their goods movements happened in SAP. Their duty calculations happened in a legacy system. The two never spoke to each other.
Every transaction required manual intervention. Reports from SAP had to be printed, interpreted, and manually entered into the duty system. Human hands transferred every piece of data. Human eyes checked every calculation.
This wasn’t just inefficient. It was a regulatory bomb ready to blow up.
The company manufactured everything from beer to spirits. Different products carried different duty rates. They supplied export markets as well as the UK. Each transaction carried compliance risk.
Getting duty calculations wrong meant problems with tax authorities. Penalties. Investigations. Damaged relationships with HMRC. For a growing business, these risks multiplied daily.
The manual process was bad enough. But the warehouse made everything worse. Some goods were valued duty paid. Others were duty unpaid. The same warehouse held both types simultaneously.
Standard SAP solutions couldn’t handle this complexity. The legacy duty system understood it but couldn’t integrate. The gap between systems was growing wider as the business expanded.
Every new product line increased complexity. Every new export market added compliance requirements. Every day of growth made the manual process more dangerous.
Manual data transfer meant constant error opportunities. Tired staff made mistakes. Complex calculations got confused. Export rules were misapplied. Duty rates were wrong.
Each error risked compliance problems. The tax authorities don’t accept “manual process” as an excuse. They expect accurate calculations and proper documentation. The legacy system couldn’t deliver either reliably.
The client needed integration. Before the errors blew up.
The client turned to Pivot for both recommendation and implementation. They needed a solution that understood both SAP integration and duty complexity.
Pivot’s consultants walked through the entire process with the client team. They detailed every requirement. They understood the unique warehouse valuation challenge. Some goods duty paid, others duty unpaid, all in the same system.
A standard SAP toolkit provided the foundation. But bespoke development was necessary for the warehouse complexity.
Pivot built custom solutions. They developed a prototype using client data. This proved the concept and made the solution tangible. The client could see their transactions flowing through the integrated system.
Pivot involved the client’s ABAP team in every custom development. This wasn’t about creating dependency. It was about building capability.
The client’s developers learned the new system inside out. They could deliver future enhancements on their own. They owned the solution after go-live.
The integrated solution eliminated manual data transfer completely. Goods movements in SAP automatically triggered duty calculations. Documentation was generated automatically for tax authority submission.
Error opportunities disappeared. Compliance risks evaporated. The regulatory time bomb was defused.
The best consulting doesn’t just solve problems. It builds capability and transfers knowledge.
For a fast-growing drinks manufacturer, eliminating compliance risks while building internal expertise was what they needed to scale safely.
