In the second post in the series, Geni Whitehouse asked Helene Sassone, Oztera project manager, to describe her favorite TeraVina features.
Helen, you provide training and implementation for winery clients using TeraVina in their business. What makes TeraVina special?
It starts with the value of having everything all in one system. Information flows seamlessly from one area of the business to another without having to switch between different applications. There is no need to import or export data, it is all there. In addition, TeraVina easily integrates with leading wine industry applications like ShipCompliant.
What is the impact on wineries of these information silos?
Some of the biggest challenges result from timing delays, errors and disparate information. One system reports information in one way and another system has different information. The numbers don’t jive which means employees and managers have less visibility into the business. You will find people creating their own record-keeping systems when they can’t rely on the company to provide information in a timely manner.
What do people think when they start using TeraVina?
Most of them are pleasantly surprised that they are able to navigate all the way back to the source document from an accounting perspective. (No more running back to a different system trying to connect the dots.) They can follow the movement of information through the business. But, TeraVina also has the flexibility to limit access to users who don’t need it – in a very specific, granular way. Because TeraVina, which is built on Microsoft Dynamics NAV, has all of the information in a centralized location, our clients can get reports in any way they need it. They also have access to more advanced reporting and analysis through our partnership with Targit solutions.
The information needed by the accounting team is often different from the needs of the sales team. How does TeraVina serve these different groups?
Now instead of exchanging spreadsheets back and forth they can both work from a centralized location. When it comes to budgeting, information can be generated out of TeraVina and given to sales people for submission in a file that feeds directly into TeraVina.
What other problems do your clients face?
We have heard of many instances of clients on other systems running reports multiple times and getting different numbers. With TeraVina there is full traceability so you can understand why the numbers change. You can also be certain that date cutoffs are correctly applied for reporting purposes. In other systems there might also be different report parameters that are not clearly identified when a report is generated.
Ultimately, bad data limits insights for everyone on the team. It can lead to poor customer service and even worse, incorrect decision making by managers.
Once all that data is in one place, what do wineries do with it?
They start cross-selling to customers . They can view sales by sales channel, by location, by varietal, by any number of different categories which are defined by the company.
How does a winery owner benefit ?
He can rely on his team to make good decisions. He or she can be secure that everyone has more accurate information faster. As a result, the management team can stop looking backwards, they are able to look forward and plan accurately with timely information. They can project future production requirements and meet their sales demand.
Multi-location wineries are able to bring all locations together on a single system. They are able to standardize across their organization as they add new wineries. We have seen companies get new locations up and running in a few weeks.
Tasting room teams are happy because they can see customer information across all brands, there are no longer silos across locations or business units.
How about managing all of that data? Doesn’t it get unwieldy?
No this database is designed for large amounts of data which can be stored and retrieved efficiently.
What about non-financial data? How can I incorporate that information into my analysis?
We have an HR module with employee counts and we offer a vineyard management module. For clients using our vineyard management module, they can access the number of acres, expected yield, even sample analysis on the vineyards. They can also create financial statements that draw information from non-financial data posted to the general ledger. For example, we record equivalent case sales, and our clients can put that into the general ledger for financial reporting.
TeraVina also supports automation of processing which can be done at off-peak times and automation of repetitive tasks so users don’t have to remember to make these calculations themselves.
–image via nitrub on iStockPhoto