When it comes to investing in technology in the wine industry, there’s a huge discrepancy in terms of money spent. A recent WBM Technology Survey by Wine Business Monthly magazine shows that while 90% of small wineries spend less than $50,000 per year on IT, more than half (54%) of large wineries spend more than $1 million.
Tweet: How Wineries Can Invest their IT Dollars for Better Analytics and Job Creation
This obviously makes sense – wineries do what they can with the resources they have. What was striking, though, is that the majority of medium and large wineries had the same top IT issue, which is “providing better data to our trade sales team.” Better data can indeed produce a myriad of positive results – providing insight into areas such as finance and sales, and spurring company growth. In this blog post, we’ll look at how business intelligence solutions can help wineries – no matter what their revenue or the size of their IT budget – make better use of their data and gain the insights they need.
Gain better understanding about business
I had mentioned the need for business intelligence in wine business in a previous blog post, How Business Intelligence & Millennials Can Give Wineries a Leg Up. By investing in business intelligence, wineries can generate reports faster, track sales, understand their customer base, and analyze data to make better decisions. Real-time analytics can also help wineries gain better insights into their data about their products and customers across all departments.
Increase productivity and efficiency with sales team
Salespeople have difficult jobs. They can face less than ideal work environments, spend more than 50% of their time traveling, and have high expectations to succeed – often without the right tools. However, new technology has allowed salespeople to travel with real-time information, stay connected, and be more productive. Wineries therefore need to invest smartly in technology that better supports their salespeople. These investments can result in improved productivity and efficiency.
An ideal business intelligence platform would allow salespeople to access various pieces of information at a fast speed whether they are in or out of the office. An on-the-go software tool would increase efficiency and productivity by providing access to content across different devices. Business intelligence software would also allow sales teams to securely access analytics, sales data, product marketing collateral, presentations, etc. Furthermore, business intelligence software would allow salespeople to meet their goals and quotas while driving sales.
Support economic growth and create jobs
In the January 2017 Wine Business Monthly article titled: “When the Wine is Plentiful and the Job Market is Tight,” Linda Higueras explores employment trends and reasons for a tight job market in the wine industry. The June 2017 WBM Survey Report asked wineries how they are staffing their IT departments. According to the survey report, most wineries have a combination of in-house staff and outside services. An investment in IT dollars can open the job market and create more jobs. These job opportunities would allow employees to focus primarily on data analysis and reporting. Job creation would reduce the need for a tech-heavy staff, freeing up the company to invest in sales, marketing, finance and operations.
What’s next for the wine business?
BI software can benefit wineries in various ways, whether it be real-time analytics, improved productivity for their sales teams, or job creation. As technology and the role of data analytics increases, it will be more important for wineries to invest in technology that will help them better understand their businesses.
Of course, Dimensional Insight can help here. Learn more about our products for the beverage alcohol industry when you request a demo.
- Understanding Wineries’ Top 3 IT Priorities - September 18, 2018
- 3 Skills Tomorrow’s Distributor Executives Need to Know - August 29, 2018
- Dimensional Insight Book Club: Why We Sleep - August 23, 2018
