GUEST POST BY MIKE SMITH

The people, places, and products in the wine industry provide indelible experiences. For those of us who also love data and analytics, the wine industry is rich with opportunities to catalog and analyze the flow of information through the various systems that deliver the experience. 

For wineries, ecommerce has taken center stage as sales channels that rely on physical presence are blocked or severely restricted. Supply chain risk, operational performance, regulation, and climate change are also creating opportunities for more data-driven solutions across the wine business.

At the same time, wine businesses outside the top revenue tier are likely to face challenges in applying data and analytics to their business. How do big data tactics apply to the small data that most wine businesses have?

Based on feedback from the community, interest in wine data spans a wide range, including: 

• Accessing data from third-party systems

• Creating compelling reports with data

• Segmenting customers to personalize communications

• Predicting which customers will be a winery’s best customers, or which will churn

• Using metrics from one part of the business to drive action in other parts

• Tracing the supply chain that supports the final product

• Using climate data for planning or pricing

• Definition/Adoption of industry standards for public data sets

If you have already completed the Wine Data survey, thank you for your input and please stay tuned as we work to set things up. If you haven’t completed the survey, we hope you will take a few minutes to share your perspective. We’re looking forward to making progress together.

As the adoption of digital technology accelerates, there is an opportunity for a Wine Data Community to support growth in data and analytics across the global wine industry by facilitating Connections, Content, and industry Advocacy, which are three themes that overlap in the Wine Data survey responses.

If we can connect people looking for help with people who can provide help, we can enable more collaboration. Collaboration can produce content that can be shared to describe common solutions and best practices with data and analytics. Engaging with international regulatory and industry organizations can help promote data collection and quality objectives. Advocacy for policy changes that support improved data quality and availability of public data related to the wine business creates potential benefits for the industry as a whole. 

Ultimately, value lies not in the data itself or the analytics, but in the ability to use insights to drive the best results for wine people, places and products. Working collaboratively, we can increase transparency and support better decision making across the global wine business.

Thanks to Cathy for initiating a global Wine Data Community to collaborate on data and analytics in the wine industry, and for including me on this exciting journey. We are living in a time of transformation. Whatever the post-pandemic world looks like, it seems safe to say digital solutions and the data they generate will be more important than ever before. 

Mike

mike@8sides.xyz

linkedin.com/in/michaelsmithtech

While spending a couple of decades delivering data-driven, predictive solutions to improve business performance across financial services and ecommerce, I became interested in the unique challenges of wine business dynamics. I am currently working on the application of data and analytics to consumer engagement in DTC channels. I’m excited to help with the organization of the Wine Data Community because I see a lot of opportunities to collaborate on advancing the state of the art with data in the wine business.