How Business Intelligence Can Increase Sales for the Wine and Spirits Sector

According to the 2017 Silicon Valley Bank Wine report, wine sales will increase by 10 percent this year compared to last, which directly correlates with the growth of wineries nationwide. There are now approximately 9,000 wineries in the United States – representing a 43 percent increase over the last ten years. From a sales standpoint, wineries and wholesalers/distributors are looking for ways to stand out among the crowd and entice this growing market to purchase their wines.

To stay competitive, many wine and spirits organizations are turning to business intelligence to gain insights into their sales channels and attain an integrated view of the entire business.

Here are four tips derived from our wine and spirits customers that are optimizing and increasing sales efforts through business intelligence:

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Go Mobile

A long time user of a business intelligence (BI) solution, North Carolina beer and wine wholesaler Mutual Distributing Company decided that it needed fast access to data in order to expand its distribution and increase sales across the state. By implementing the BI and information delivery solution on iPad Minis, Mutual Distributing Company was able to leverage a mobile BI solution that was compatible for both iOS and Windows operating systems. The mobile solution not only expanded the reach of the sales team, but also enabled them to achieve the following regardless of their location:

  • Distribute documents, forms and price lists
  • Have access to presentations to show customers
  • Provide dashboards that showcased goal achievement
  • Perform data analytics
  • Share information with customers

Through its mobile BI solution, the company’s sales team can now compare sales performances by product, time period and geographical region.  Having on the go access to the most up-to-date data enables the sales team to be flexible and scalable, and provides their customers with more targeted information in a more-timely manner – resulting in increased sales and customer satisfaction.

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Allow for a Holistic Business View

In less than fifteen years, Newberg, Oregon-based A to Z Wineworks increased its wine production from 2,500 cases to almost 300,000 cases. Due to its rapid growth, the winery quickly needed access to timely data and a holistic view of its sales and distribution channel. The company decided to create an in-house sales team and adopted a BI solution. As a result of the insights produced by the BI solution, the sales team is now able to:

  • Clearly define sales channel opportunities with on-premise national accounts
  • Focus on data-driven facts
  • Track progress against sales targets

In addition to its U.S. territory, A to Z Wineworks also maintains a network across three continents- Asia, Europe and North America. While previously overwhelming without the help of a BI solution, sales teams can now track depletions and view distributor performance easily and quickly across markets, enabling them to make real-time business decisions

Improve Retailer Relations

As the seventh largest distributor of wine and spirits in the United States, Martignetti Companies was in need of an enterprise-wide business intelligence solution to act as the single source for operations and sales. By implementing a BI solution, Martignetti was able to successfully track the sales and inventory of more than 15,000 SKUs, providing its sales representatives with up-to-date information needed to:

  • Understand how and where each product was selling
  • Monitor product and geographic trends
  • Compare actual performance to goals
  • Identify retailers with low reorder or high refusal rates
  • Uncover sales opportunities

As Martignetti Companies continues to grow, having rapid insight into the purchasing behavior of its customers is enabling sales teams to build strong relationships with retailers. By sharing sales and market data with each individual retailer, Martignetti is offering strategic insights that can positively affect the retailer’s business, along with their relationship with Martignetti. By relying on a BI solution to pull and organize data, Martignetti is able to streamline its program management operations and enable its human capital to fully invest in maximizing account relationships, ultimately opening the door for future growth.

Avoid Overstocks and Shortages

A successful importer of Argentinean wine, Vino del Sol has more than doubled in size since its founding in 2011. In an effort to optimize sales, support its geographically dispersed workforce and counteract its lack of an IT department, the company decided it needed a business intelligence solution that would allow them to view:

  • Operations combined with shipments
  • Open sale orders
  • Purchase orders
  • Receipts
  • Shipment goals

By having a deep understanding of the business across the entire supply chain and distributor market, the purchasing department is now able to minimize overstocks and shortages. Being able to accurately allocate predictions and anticipate and quickly adjust to market and environmental changes, Vino del Sol is also now able to minimize the extra costs associated with product overstocks and shortages.

As the number of overstocks and shortages have decreased, the sales team is now able to focus efforts on creating strong relationships with suppliers, which is helping them to anticipate demand, plan for production and procure necessary supplies. The insights garnered by the  BI solution enable the sales team to have timely view of the day-to-day operations of specific distributors and brands, allowing them to see how they are performing across their territory and quickly identify retail trends.

Through business intelligence, Vino del Sol is supporting its company growth by providing visibility across business functions and delivering critical information to its workforce (particularly its sales team) both in the United States and Argentina. The organization is able to minimize overstocks and shortages and manage product allocations in real-time, enabling the sales team to be as effective as possible.

The wine and spirits industry is expected to continue to flourish in the months ahead. To keep up with the business boom, distributors and suppliers should employ the right business intelligence capabilities that can improve retailer relations, enhance visibility across their business, and optimize sales efforts to attain the greatest ROI possible in this growing market.

 

As co-founder and chief executive officer of Dimensional Insight, Fred Powers leads the overall strategy of the company. He co-founded Dimensional Insight in 1989 with Stan Zanarotti. Fred’s philosophy is that by supporting the customer and employee, the customer and employee will support Dimensional Insight. It is this belief that has led to Dimensional Insight coming out on top in multiple prestigious customer satisfaction surveys, as well as the long average tenure of Dimensional Insight employees. ​​

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