What information problems do YOU have?

Technology spreading the word of wine through a world of wine drinkers

What information problems do YOU have?

Posted by Randy Hall on March 31, 2008 at 7:55am in General Discussion

This was originally posted in Wine Tech Companies, but I think it deserves a wider audience... Apologies to Ryan, since he replied on the original.

The thought has occurred to me over the past few weeks that there's a variety of problems in the wine industry. The ability to get information from wineries to their business partners (and vice versa) keeps coming up.

It begs the question: What problems are you seeing when conducting your business?

Is it that everything is communicated by email or fax (or God forbid, snail mail)?
Is it that you spend a lot of your time taking information that comes to you and having to force fit it to whatever information management system you have?
Is it that you don't know what information is available to be had on a given product or winery?

What is the burning, itching problem that is making you lose sleep? Inquiring minds want to know...

Tags: information, wine

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Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by Kimberly on March 31, 2008 at 10:24pm: But oh, they are so GOOD at counting!!

I grew up in the graphic calculator age, so when someone told me today that I'd have to use a calculator with a tape for the financial work I'm doing right now, I didn't know what to say. So now I have this big foreign thing taking up space on my desk. Evil...; ▶ Reply to This

Permalink Reply by Paul Mabray on March 31, 2008 at 10:37pm: Ughg - I have an abacus for you to bring to work if you'd like to borrow it. I save it for occasions like this. LOL; ▶ Reply to This

Permalink Reply by Kimberly on March 31, 2008 at 11:13pm: Great, I'll add it to my growing pile of stuff on my desk, right next to my multiplication flash cards!

Permalink Reply by Randy Hall on April 1, 2008 at 6:05am: I actually feel your pain, because in my day job, the accounting system rules over pretty much every aspect of the work. And it's not like it's an easy-to-use interface. I've railed and protested to no avail, the piece-of-you-know-what accounting system is still there, laughing at me with it's idiotic screens and cryptic codes and numbers that I have to literally memorize or write down so I can go to another screen to enter it in.

So, I actually know exactly what you're talking about.; ▶ Reply to This

Permalink Reply by Paul Mabray on March 31, 2008 at 4:01pm: AMS seems to be one of the cornerstone systems causing many problems among wineries ESPECIALLY with consumer direct sales.; ▶ Reply to This

Permalink Reply by Paul Mabray on March 31, 2008 at 4:21pm: Pssst - Kim - we have created a more friendly OMS (order management system) - the problem will be convincing your team how the accounting should look and be entered.; ▶ Reply to This

Permalink Reply by Kimberly on March 31, 2008 at 10:18pm: (Note the newest response above). I think that if a few other wineries of our size made the switch, I'd have a much better argument! =)

How many programming geeks do you have on your staff, anyways? hah; ▶ Reply to This

Permalink Reply by Paul Mabray on March 31, 2008 at 10:22pm: We have 50 people at the company and 25 are in tech in some way or another (programmers, analysts, PM's, integrators). We have a powerful nerd contingent (myself included). To avoid breaking Joel's rules for solicitation I can only add that 500 wine brands have found a way to make it work (many cursed with legacy accounting systems). That being said, it is not easy to break people of old processes, even if they are not part of the best solution.; ▶ Reply to This

Permalink Reply by Paul Mabray on March 31, 2008 at 4:06pm: My biggest issue is the inconsistency of product naming across tiers (winery, wholesaler, retailer) especially around long label name. That leaves no common code. UPC doesn't work because 60% of wineries don't put one on the label and those who do don't change it vintage to vintage. The problems are many between brand, sub-brand, special designation, varietal and how they put them all together. This is one of the most endemic problems restricting wineries from proliferating their products for good measurement through the system. P&G would never accept this.

Another problem I have is wineries understanding that their product info on their site needs to be "clean" and updated. Never forget that many, many companies use the website information to power their info (snooth et al).

Standardized accounting practices (to Kim's point) for wineries is also an issue due to the systems for accounting in place and the way they try to manage inventory depletions rather than CRM functionality.

Finally, the concept of data hygiene for customer data. The old saying - garbage in, garbage out is also a problem with many winery databases.

Ok - I can go on but I will leave it at those for now.; ▶ Reply to This

Permalink Reply by Kimberly on March 31, 2008 at 10:20pm: I thought that there was a general UPC format that could be used (the 13-digit) with numerous systems. Perhaps wineries that want to grow their distribution (esp. through non-traditional channels like the Internet) will have to start putting one on their bottles?

If we just started using wampum and salt-trading then we'd all be just fine, dammit!; ▶ Reply to This

Permalink Reply by Anthony (Tony) Blackburn on March 31, 2008 at 9:47pm: No, Yes and Yes

In addition to affordability, scalability...; ▶ Reply to This