First, let me say Thank You.

Thank You for the incredible response to our announcement of Enolytics Lite last week. It’s clearly struck a chord with wineries under more pressure than ever before to boost their sales of wine directly to consumers.

It’s an urgent challenge that, unfortunately, wineries will also be feeling for some time to come. We want to help. There is nothing that would make me happier than bringing the power of our tools to bear upon this particular moment in wine’s business history.

Full stop.

This week I also want to share with you the three questions – road blocks, really – that will probably sound familiar as the “Yes, but…” objections we’ve been hearing for years now around wine + data projects.

Friends, this is not the time for those.

This is the time for thinking differently. This is the time for NOT business-as-usual. If there was ever a time to step outside of your comfort zone, it’s now. Because guess what? If we kept doing what we’ve always done, we wouldn’t adapt to this changing environment. Which increases the likelihood of not even having a business in the near future.

So here goes. The three road blocks and our ultra-direct responses.

I’m worried about how you’ll protect my data.

I don’t blame you. Let me share my perspective as a non-technical person: the people on our team who would be handling your data have, between them, 50+ years of experience working with very sensitive data in the healthcare space. They know about privacy, and they know how to keep it safe. They’ve done this before.

Let me also share the perspective from the data team themselves:

Enolytics takes the security of your data very seriously. We have team members at Enolytics that are certified information systems security professionals (CISSP) and they make data security a top priority for us. We have implemented technology and policies with the objective of protecting your private data from unauthorized access and improper use. All customer data is secured away in our Google Virtual Private Cloud on Google Cloud Services. We take full advantages of the enterprise level security and redundancy that Google offers. GCP Network firewalls are in place to keep our network secure from the outside world. We encrypt all data in transit leveraging a strong TLS 1.2 secure transmission encryption protocol and strong key exchange. Additionally, your data is encrypted at rest on the Google Cloud infrastructure. Access to any of the Enolytics servers and applications uses Role Based Access Controls (RBAC) to secure who has access to data.

If you have further questions on this, please let me know.

I’m worried that we are too small.

If you’re small, you’re exactly who we want to help, particularly now. It’s true that the tools can handle massive amounts of data but they also handle much smaller amounts of data using the same pathways and systems.

That’s kind of the beauty of them, I think, like the river at the bottom of a canyon. Sure, the canyon itself was carved by glaciers. That’s exactly what’s paved the way for a smaller flow of water to more easily pass through.

I’m worried it will cost too much.

Here’s my two-word response: “Try me.”

I’ve had real, candid conversations this week about money. The common denominator? Wineries assumed this kind of work will cost significantly more than it actually does. Of course we need to be paid fairly, too, but we aren’t here to gouge you on price. Especially not now.

Do those three “Yes, but…” statements sound familiar to you? If so, how do our responses land?

Please don’t let these same old road blocks prevent you and your business from moving forward. This is not the time for that.

I look forward to your thoughts, and thank you for reading –

Cathy