Return to BIECC Members of the BIECC meet on a regular basis to discuss relevant issues to the beer industry. Each year the coalition presents an education seminar at NBWA's Annual Convention. In non-trade show convention years, the BIECC also sponsors the very popular, Beer & Bytes luncheon, which allows convention attendees to enjoy lunch and at the same time learn about a new technology in the indusry from leading technology providers. The coalition has developed industry standards and positions on electronic commerce and other related issues affecting distributors and their trading partners. These have been communicated to standards setting bodies, beer industry professionals and other industry groups. Coalition members have also addressed a variety of challenges facing beer distributors. They investigated tools utilized to maximise productivity and automate the beer industry's sales force, including hand-held devices such as pagers, cellular phones, personal digital assistants (PDAs), portable data collection terminals, truck/car based personal computers (PCs) and global positioning systems (GPS). The BIECC is currently preparing an updated version of the Route Accout System (RAS) Checklist, first produced in 2001. The finished checklist should be made available in the first quarter of 2007. Additionally, the BIECC, along with the NBWA Technology Committee, has engaged in a beer distribution system data synchronization readiness assessment being conducted by the 1Sync Retail Center of Expertise (RCE). This engagement, scheduled to be completed in early 2007, will provide a business plan for the implementation of Global Data Synchronization (GDS) in the beer industry properly recognizing the roles of suppliers, distributors and retailers in the system. In August of 2006, the National Beer Wholesalers Association (NBWA) with the assistance of the Beer Industry Electronic Commerce Coalition (BIECC) contracted 1SYNC, the leading implementer of supply chain data synchronization, to conduct a Beer Industry Readiness Assessment in regards to Global Data Synchronization (GDS). The objective of this engagement was to support the proactive planning of GDS solutions by evaluating beer suppliers, importers, distributors, and retailers regarding logistics, item and price/promotion data collection, invoicing, and other relevant business processes, and to provide a prescriptive implementation roadmap that may be used for a Beer Industry GDS pilot. Below are the executive summaries from interviews conducted with Suppliers, Distributors and Retailers as well as the final Presentation which was presented to both the BIECC and the NBWA Technology Committee.