With the 2023 Unified Wine & Grape Symposium (UWGS) wrapped up, our Enavation Cloud: VinPoint Wine Management team at Enavate is energized by the conversations we had with both old and new connections in the wine industry. It was a special time for our team, and we are excited we had the opportunity to not only attend, but also to be a sponsor this year.
Sole operators, managers and those who work the day-to-day winery operations stopped to talk with us about the industry. For us, one key takeaway from these discussions is that they confirmed the need for consistent, secure business data management across the industry. And while data management is not wine-specific, how wineries go about collecting and using their data and financials is unique.
We know the unique attributes that make a winery’s financial data too complicated for a general business solution. We also know the value of your business data and the importance of protecting, organizing and storing it.
While we aren’t master vignerons, at Enavate, we are experts in business data management. Our expertise informed our interactions at UWGS and led us to three main pieces of advice for wineries in 2023.
Don’t Let One Disaster Lead to Another
We’ve heard all the stories of wineries losing their vineyards and/or bulk inventory to natural disasters: fires, smoke choke, water wars and infestation just to name a few. And no matter how many times we hear the same story, it still leaves a pit in our stomachs knowing what these businesses lost. When they not only lose their inventory and assets, but also their data, it’s a particularly bleak situation that adds insult to injury.
However, not all disasters come from nature. Wineries, like many businesses, are at risk of being victimized by cybercrime, such as ransomware attacks. Protecting data from cyberattacks or system crashes is paramount to keeping your business functional and thriving even in the midst of chaos.
VinPoint Wine Management comes with Disaster Recovery as a Service (DRaaS). At Enavate, we can’t control the weather and natural disasters. But we can help you keep your data safe from potential cyber incidents, provide secure backups if you experience system crashes and keep your data secure and in one piece even if your computers are damaged.
Be Certain About Your Data in an Uncertain Economy
Ultimately, data drives sales. And with the economy showing signs of uncertainty, your data is your greatest tool to identify trends and business opportunities specific to your business. Today’s sensitive market, coupled with wineries still recovering from the downturn of onsite sales during the pandemic, caused a shift in the need for wineries to focus on how they use data.
According to HKTDC Research, wine sales from ecommerce grew from 0.3% in 2018 to 3% in 2022. And Gen Z is shifting their purchasing away from pinot grigio to cannabis and hard seltzers. Wineries need data to understand how to pivot with these changes— profitably and efficiently.
As the need for data continues to grow, so will the need for wineries to harness that data and leverage it to grow their business. VinPoint Wine Management is a complete financial management solution that speaks the language of wineries, making it easier to track wine-specific key performance indicators (KPIs) that hold real value for the industry.
With the pairing of Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central and Power BI, accessing your data and running meaningful reports put you at an advantage over the competition.
Double Down on Your Data Literacy Skills
Centralizing, protecting and accessing your business’ information is only the first step in creating a successful relationship with your data. Knowing how to read and utilize that data is the next step in securing your business’ future.
Vignerons are masters at winemaking; however, few are also data literate. And that’s okay— we can’t be great at every aspect of our business. At Enavate, we’re great at helping our clients succeed with technology, but few, if any of us, are able to produce an award-winning bottle of cabernet sauvignon.
Becoming data literate in your business is a process to take one step at a time. When you partner with Enavate, you can utilize training to understand what your software does and how you can use it so it works for you and your workflow. We take the time to onboard our clients and are always available to answer questions long after implementation. To us, your success is our success. And success rarely happens without knowledge and training.
Stand Out from the Competition
Gathering and using data properly is a concern that commonly taxes small to medium-sized businesses, including those in the wine industry. Data can help you separate yourself from the crowd and keep you thriving, as well as compliant.
At Enavate, we value the importance and intricacies of the winemaking process. While moving to a Cloud-based technology may feel tedious or outside of tradition for an industry that relies so heavily on intuition and a handmade feel, it provides your business with the opportunity to keep this tradition strong in the future by leveraging your data.
Using a Cloud-based solution such as VinPoint Wine Management with Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central offers wineries the necessary functionality to grow and remain competitive. If your business is growing out of Excel and QuickBooks, moving to a comprehensive solution that eliminates tedious and error-prone manual work is your next step.
At Enavate, we understand the pain points for wineries, and we’re inspired to help an industry that has been around for centuries modernize its technology to make what is controllable as easy as possible.
We can’t wait for next year’s Unified Wine and Grape Symposium and want to congratulate our booth grand prize winner this year, Nick Frey at Frey Vineyards, who is now the owner of the award winning, smokeless, portable Solo Stove: Bonfire 2.0!
Reach out to our VinPoint Wine Management experts to learn about how we can help make your data one less thing to worry about for your business.
