Excellence in winemaking is the rewarding result of detailed planning, the best environment, science, profound patience and loving care. The wine industry is steeped in the time-honored tradition of employing these processes from grape to glass.
It makes perfect sense that the business tools for this unique industry would also come from a strategic mix of experience, attention to detail and leading-edge information to ensure a winery’s effectiveness and financial success. Historically, the industry has struggled to adapt to emerging technologies as a byproduct of the reliance on legacy systems to support operations. However, there’s a new movement toward more efficient and integrated systems.
As the wine business welcomes new generations of leadership and recruits more and more outside talent, innovative ideologies and methods of doing business aren’t only being embraced, but are expected. The introduction of varied software technologies for wine production, accounting, tasting room and outside sales and marketing has inadvertently created a situation where wineries have multiple systems unable to “speak” to each other.
Over the years, my company recognized that many wineries had accumulated so many different software systems that it became nearly impossible for all of them to work together successfully. This was largely due to traditional sales practices focused on replacing manual systems with expensive stand-alone solutions that ultimately didn’t integrate with each other. To address this, we developed an enterprise software solution that provides accounting, inventory, sales, wine production, customer information management and financial reporting for the wine industry. It offers wineries and wine-related businesses “grape to glass” functionality and integration with most of today’s third-party winery software.
While having a package that can integrate all existing systems may be ideal, the thought of replacing current technologies can be a daunting and time-consuming task. When looking for new systems to replace old, there are several important factors that should go into the decision making process. The key is to think big picture:
• Identify the goals and objectives for the new system.
• Take all your needs into account.
• Perform a thorough review of your current business processes.
• Break each of your needs down to see where integration of existing systems can take place.
An enterprise software solution will likely touch all functions—from accounting, production, vineyard management, sales and other departments—so it’s important to get input from all key personnel from the start. A discovery process that includes getting feedback from your team about the features they rely on in the current system, the types of features they wish they had, and what their goals are for a new system will help to separate the businesses-critical requirements from the “nice to have” requests.
It’s also important to think about your long-term goals and how your system can help support those initiatives. Do you plan to increase your production? Sell through additional distribution channels? Open another location? Introduce a wine club? While it’s important to find a solution that can work for you today, it’s just as important that it can scale to grow with your business in the years ahead.
Once you have a comprehensive understanding of your business processes, you can begin to look at specific systems and vendors that will meet your needs. There are a variety of solutions marketed toward the wine industry that may satisfy the technical requirements, but that implementation is just the beginning to any successful, long-term association. The relationship you have with the vendor before, during and after the initial implementation is what’s most critical.
A technology company should strive to be your partner, a systems architect building the best solution to facilitate optimum success. It’s important to keep the future in mind and have the foresight to see not only your current needs but how growth, the economy and shifts in the industry will ultimately affect your systems and productivity. To do this well, your partner must effectively match your business needs with technology. It should have a deep understanding of your business process and the ability to configure hardware and software to support and enhance those processes. Instead of bringing in another vendor or placing a bandage on a technical issue, it’s critical that your technology “architect” partners with you from start to finish, consulting on all aspects of your technical needs so the requirements of each system can be taken into consideration and your IT infrastructure can be built properly from the ground up.
A well-built network should support your business strategy, keep IT costs down and help grow your bottom line. As a winery grows, so does its reliance upon technology. However, technology is constantly evolving and it can be tough for a winery to keep up. A proactive managed services program that offers monitoring, maintenance and support for a winery’s IT infrastructure can be helpful in improving overall network performance and reliability, managing IT costs, and assisting with strategic planning and budgeting without the added cost burden of an IT staff, CIO or CTO.
We’ve seen numerous high-profile wineries and wine industry clients achieve significant increases in their operational efficiencies, productivity and profitability by incorporating a fully featured enterprise software solution built on a stable infrastructure.
Soni Lampert is owner at KLH Consulting, Inc., a technology leader in the North Bay for more than 30 years. KLH is the developer of Vintegrate, a fully featured enterprise software solution that provides accounting, inventory, sales, wine production, customer information management and financial reporting for the wine industry. For more information, please call (800) 487-3363.
