Taking the wine industry to the cloud; New system to cover all aspects, from production to management

While location and the nature of local soil matters significantly when it comes to wine growing, location no longer matters when it comes to managing the business side of the wine industry.

Cloud accounting and ERP system developer Netsuite is partnering with eWinery Solutions a provider of DTC (direct-to-consumer) software and systems for the wine industry. Together, they are offering an industry-specific cloud software solution called VinSuite, which will be available to support wineries throughout the world.

The planned solution will give wineries the tools they need to truly compete at both the local and international levels. 

VinSuite, to be built atop NetSuite using NetSuite's SuiteCloud development platform, will combine the power of NetSuite's ERP, CRM, and eCommerce with eWinery's vertical domain knowledge in the wine industry and expertise in winery software development.

It will deliver the first integrated solution for wineries to manage all of their mission critical business operations in the cloud with one system – from tasting room point-of-sale (POS) systems, wine club membership and program management, to allocations of inventories, order management, customer relationship management, and omnichannel sales including tasting room, telesales, B2B and B2C eCommerce and global expansion.

For the first time, wineries will have a cloud solution to provide the power, flexibility and agility to transform their business operations.

The wine industry is increasingly competitive, with more than 8,000 wineries, 100,000+ wine brands and 100,000+ wine retailers in the USA, and new developments every week in Europe, Latin America and Asia Pacific.

It is truly a global business, but the software systems used to run these businesses are fragmented. Typically a winery has to use multiple, disparate systems, creating inefficiency and high costs. For the first time in the wine industry, this integrated solution between NetSuite and eWinery will offer wineries a comprehensive set of capabilities to manage and streamline DTC sales, covering CRM, POS, loyalty clubs, email marketing, eCommerce through the NetSuite SuiteCommerce platform, and more.

"The wine industry has lagged in technology development and this has resulted in a myriad of home grown solutions that either don't communicate at all with other systems or do so poorly," said Richard Kline, eWinery Solutions founder and CEO. 

Atop NetSuite, the eWinery solution will give wineries a single record of customer transactions across multiple channels, from online orders to in-person purchases at a winery to call center sales.

In addition, eWinery will offer new capabilities to allow wineries to manage their wholesale B2B distribution businesses through customization of NetSuite functionality for ERP, order-to-cash cycles, inventory and order management, warehousing, shipping and fulfillment, B2B eCommerce, financial reporting and analytics, and self-service portals for buyers.

The eWinery solution includes functionality specific to wine industry DTC sales, such as age and address verification of customers, compliance with local restrictions at the state and county level, and tools to build and manage loyalty programs popular with wine connoisseurs.

eWinery's customization is based on NetSuite's SuiteCloud, a comprehensive offering of development tools and services designed to help customers and commercial software developers take advantage of the significant economic benefits of cloud computing.

Through its partnership with NetSuite, eWinery Solutions has access to the top experts and systems in cloud computing, as well as the ability to fully design and develop new software solutions for every phase of the wine industry, from the vineyard and cellar right through to sales and accounting.

Leveraging NetSuite's built-in functionality and the SuiteCloud development platform, eWinery can rapidly develop and deploy new products to wineries around the world using NetSuite's world-class hosting facilities.