New York State Liquor Authority Implements Product Registration Online

The Organization

The New York State Liquor Authority (NYSLA) regulates and controls the manufacture, sale and distribution of alcoholic beverages within New York. Managing more than 39,000 active brands, the Authority works with local law enforcement agencies and localities across New York to ensure compliance with the Alcoholic Beverage Control (ABC) Law. In addition, the Authority issues and renews licenses and permits to manufacturers, distributors, wholesalers and retailers of alcoholic beverages.

Accelerated brand registration processing
Cut down expected wait times
Eased the internal burden on employees
Reduced paper waste and shipping costs

Top Challenges

New York’s Alcoholic Beverage Control Law requires all brand labels for beer, low-alcohol wine, liquor, and hard cider products be registered and approved by the State Liquor Authority (SLA) before they are brought to market.

New York registrations and renewals had been completed on paper previously, with the state printing and mailing sometimes huge paper packets to companies to complete and return.Before going to market, suppliers and distributors had to wait several weeks for product approval before being able to legally sell their products in the state.

Employees spent hours printing paper for filing brand registrations and renewing licenses. The NYSLA needed a solution that streamlined paper processing without giving employees an extra burden.

Background

The NYSLA needed a user-friendly solution to digitize and streamline its brand registration and renewal process for the sale of beer, wine and spirits.

As one of the nation’s largest state liquor and regulatory agencies, in 2018, NYSLA mailed out:

804 renewal packets

23,272 renewal approval letters

652 rejected application packets

Based on those numbers, and a base postage of $1.00, the NYSLA is poised to save approximately $12,500 in mailing costs annually. In 2020, the approval rate for renewals was 93.7%.

The COVID-19 pandemic further exacerbated the need for the NYSLA to accelerate its brand registration processing, cut down expected wait times, ease the internal burden on employees, while also reducing paper waste and shipping costs.

Solution

The NYSLA implemented Sovos ShipCompliant’s Product Registration Online (PRO) tool to decrease the process and cost of getting registrations approved for beer, wine and spirits.

Brand registration processing was accelerated, while wait times were cut down from weeks to hours in many cases. Paper waste and shipping costs were also reduced.

Less employee time was spent on follow-up inquiries from licensees, as an intuitive, centralized system provided up-to-date application processing information. This was especially beneficial as the NYSLA processed 5,419 applications from January to April 2021, an increase from the 4,001 applications processed during that same four-month period in 2020.

Additional Benefits

Implementing PRO enabled users to easily bulk renew all products with a “select all” button instead of checking off one-by-one on paper. Additionally, NYSLA now has historical data easily accessible to users within the PRO systems. There is also increased security as registrations and payment transactions now take place on secure data servers.

Furthermore, the switch allows licensees to view their currently registered brands and track the status of their pending registrations.

The NYSLA team enjoys a dedicated partner in PRO to promptly and professionally address issues as they arise.

Why Product Registration Online (PRO)?

With ShipCompliant PRO, users can submit applications, along with any state fees, for speedy review. Agencies can examine all application details within the PRO portal, leave comments and approve registrations without any paper or postage required. PRO also retains all historical data for users securely in the cloud. The end result is a more transparent and efficient process for all parties.

PRO’s automation of the brand registration and renewal processes, while also streamlining communications, made it the ideal choice for the NYSLA.

New York State Liquor Authority Implements Product Registration Online (PRO) for Streamlined Brand Label Registration and Renewal Process