SOFTWARE FOR SUDS: Two beer and software enthusiasts partnered to create a leader in designing craft-beverage workflows.

• Author: Miller, Harrison

It started with a message on Linkedln. "Hey, I think we're working on the same thing and might be competitors some day, maybe we should team up to make this happen?" Greg Forehand wrote to Josh McKinney, 34, who is now the CEO of Charlotte's Ekos Software Inc., which targets craft food and beverage companies looking to streamline their workflow.

McKinney and Forehand, both craft-beer aficionados with tech experience, realized many startup beermakers knew more about suds than how to run a business. The beginning brewers often had little understanding of how to efficiently track production.

McKinney, who graduated from Appalachian State University with degrees in information systems and business management, developed software for a couple of companies and nonprofits in Charleston, S.C., before moving to Charlotte in 2010. Shortly after, he began speaking with different area brewers about their production and tracking processes. He found large enterprise resource-planning software offered by industry leaders such as Salesforce.com Inc. was too expensive and complicated for smaller breweries. The only real alternative was keeping physical records on paper, spreadsheets and whiteboards.

"With a software background, seeing all the whiteboards gave me serious anxiety," McKinney says. "Accidentally brushing up against it could erase an entire month's schedule."

He began shopping around the idea of a software program that could track the entire craft process, from inventory and production schedules to accounting and tax records. At the same time, Forehand, an Army veteran and graduate of Alabama's Jacksonville State University with a degree in computer science, was reaching out to Charlotte brewers about a similar product that his Tech-Structures LLC software company was developing. When McKinney's name kept popping up with different brewers, Forehand, 48, made contact, and the two joined forces in April 2014 at Ekos, which spun out of Forehand's company.

McKinney focused on business issues while Forehand handled the main architecture for what would become their flagship product, Ekos Brewmaster. Software development was handled in-house. The duo stayed in Charlotte because of its expanding tech market, growing number of breweries and central location in North Carolina.

"We built it from the ground up. It took a lot of blood, sweat and tears," McKinney says.

As a niche industry, craft-beer production wasn't an especially attractive target market for...