Wine Technology Blog @ WineWeb.com

The winery CRM product review article from the July issue of Wine Business Monthly is now online. I just read it again to see what the author considered most important (integration of CRM across all sales channels), and where WineWeb may want to invest in enhancements to its customer relationship management services. It's a good article and worth a read. One thing that was not quite accurate in the product comparison matrix was the price listed for our CRM service. The WineWeb CRM service is included at no additional cost to our Enhanced Website Plan. The pricing listed in the matrix is for that plan, not just the CRM component.

You've probably heard the news that Inertia Beverage is scrapping their e-commerce software. If not, read about it at Wine Industry Insight. Our response was a letter to all our clients, as follows:

June 3, 2010

Dear WineWeb Clients:

Thank you for being a loyal client. We want to assure you that WineWeb will continue to provide innovative technology solutions to meet your business needs. With the publicized demise of Inertia's e-commerce software, we want to take this opportunity to reinforce that your technology decision was the right choice. We also want to thank you for speaking well about us to other wineries who are researching software solutions. Many new clients tell us that they are amazed at the glowing references from our client base. We believe that it's all about providing a great technology feature set at an affordable value, and backing that with great customer service.

Inertia's letter lists some features that their new software vendor will provide that were not part of their current software. The phrase "yeah, we do that" comes to mind. Here's a list of some of their "new" features and when they were implemented in WineWeb.

We have always believed in integrating our services with others. In 2006, we published a guide to our web services to enable any other service to integrate with us. We provide integration to over 20 payment gateways, a dozen fulfillment centers, multiple compliance services, age verification services, shipping carriers, wine club software, POS software and QuickBooks, with no additional setup fees.

We continually enhance our services, based on client input and technology trends. This year there have been over 60 enhancements. All of these enhancements are provided at no additional cost to our clients. Read the full letter.

We've been saying for a while that our winery POS system runs on an iPhone, which makes it very portable. Now, with the release of the iPad, I needed to see how the POS would look and function on that device (at least that's the excuse I used to justify purchasing this new gadget).

As expected, the WineWeb point-of-sale application displays nicely on the 1024 pixel wide iPad screen. We made a couple of very minor tweaks to the software to optimize it for this display and proclaimed the software "good to go". However, connecting other devices to an iPad is currently an issue. In a POS environment, a credit card reader and a receipt printer, though optional, are typically used. Since the iPad does not have any USB ports, we need equipment that can connect via the charging/sync port or the headphone jack, or over Bluetooth. Based on some limited research, there are products either announced or shipping that will work. I noted a credit card reader that attaches to the headphone jack, a Bluetooth credit card reader and a Bluetooth card reader/receipt printer unit. I'm confident that the coming months will provide more options.

My impressions of the iPad have changed in the past few days. My initial thought was that it would be just a larger version of an iPod Touch and it would replace a netbook for surfing and email when traveling. I'm now seeing more for this device. After spending time with the Apple developer guides and their interface standards documents, I'm sensing that the iPad will usher in a new way of interacting with web content. The eBay app is a good example of how a more visual, touch-oriented approach can be applied to an application.

Dubbed the Wholesaler Bailout bill, House Resolution 5034 was introduced into Congress. If passed, this bill would essentially end the direct shipment of wine to consumers and put many of this country's 6,000 wineries out of business. If you ever needed an excuse to write your Representative, this is it. Don't let this bill pass -- oppose it, and tell your friends.

Tom Wark has done a great analysis of the bill -- read it here.

In case you missed it, the U.S. House of Representatives Subcommittee on Courts and Competition Policy yesterday conducted a hearing entitled "Legal Issues Concerning State Alcohol Regulation". Here's the link that includes the video and the statements from each witness. Lot's of buzz about this from both sides of the argument. Essentially the beer wholesaler's association wants Congress to enact legislation to prohibit direct shipping of any type of alcohol.

Here's a link to Wine Industry Insight's article listing 11 of the 14 members of the subcommittee that have accepted contributions from the beer wholesaler's association. Here's a link to the Specialty Wine Retailers Association statement and Tom Wark's blog post. Please read this information to better understand what's going on here, then get involved to raise awareness of this issue.

When we demonstrate our winery point-of-sale system, we tell people that it's portable anywhere there is an Internet connection. We also inform them that our POS can run on an iPhone, and we think it looks quite nice on that mobile device.

We usually joke that the only thing that our winery POS on an iPhone can't do is swipe a credit card. Now it appears we can't say that any longer as Mophie has announced an iPhone case that includes a credit card reader. Quite cool.

As I was sweeping snow off of the solar panels (again), I realized that I had never blogged about our solar project. Our photovoltaic solar array came online Dec. 29, in the midst of the holidays and the year-end crunch to get the tax credits. We can now claim that all the energy needed to power, heat and cool WineWeb's office space comes from the sun.

I'm still amazed at the ability of the solar panels to generate electricity in less than sunny conditions. Currently it's totally overcast (one of those rare days in Santa Fe) with a few snowflakes coming down, and they're generating 345 AC watts, enough to power a computer and lights. It's a grid-tied system, so excess energy is fed back to the utility. The incentives are great to install solar panels. 30% Federal tax credit, 10% state tax credit, net-metering for all energy sent back to the utility, and an additional credit for every kWh that we generate, regardless of whether we use it or give it to the utility. Our payback on the investment is about 5 years.

Of course we opted for the ability to monitor the system in real-time over the Internet. The monitor was installed over the weekend, and now anyone can see the statistics on our solar system by going to solrenview.com. I like talking about this to anyone who would listen, and am happy to see the results of many years of research.

I had a flash of brilliance last night (at least that's what I'm claiming). We were readying the release of our Customer Relationship Management (CRM) software for wineries, and I had been writing that this component "rounds out our service offerings". Then I glanced up at the WineWeb logo and started counting our services: websites, e-commerce, point-of-sale, wine clubs, email campaigns, and now CRM. That makes six, the same number as the number of grapes in our logo. Wow! Without realizing it, we had filled in our grape cluster. We had created the "6th grape".

Was our graphic designer psychic when he created the logo some ten years ago? Maybe, but I digress. We've reached a milestone. Our cluster is full.

The press release is at www.wineweb.com/pr/press_release_20091120.html.

We were planning to make a big announcement when the 100th winery client signed up for our services, possibly even balloons and confetti. Well, that momentous event happened a week ago last Friday, and then last Monday a record three clients registered in a single day. We've just been "heads down, elbows out" busy with our new clients that we haven't had time to boast about these things. Not that we tend to brag about these things anyway -- we let our clients do the talking.