If you’re a winemaker, winery owner or executive, you know that crafting wine is anything but a straightforward manufacturing process. And small decisions can make and break profits. Winemaking isn’t a simple recipe; it’s an evolving blend of art, science, and constant hands-on adjustments. Every harvest, blend, and barrel is unique, meaning there’s no “one-size-fits-all” approach to production.

That’s where traditional Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) systems fall short. While they’re great for tracking your general ledger, automating order management, and tracking case goods inventory, they don’t understand the nuances of wine production. In this article, we’ll get into why ERPs just aren’t a good fit for the cellar—and why integrating purpose-built winery solutions can make all the difference.

Where ERPs Miss the Mark for Wineries

1. No Vineyard Tracking or Insights
   Winemaking starts in the vineyard, but most ERPs aren’t designed to track this critical phase. Without vineyard tracking tools, wineries end up juggling spreadsheets or disconnected systems to get important insights. This fragmentation makes it harder to make informed decisions around harvest estimates, crop yields, and vintage costs. Also, informed future planning relies on looking at historical juice yields and seeing what grapes (and cost) went into each wine.
2. Can’t Handle Volume Movements and Blending
   Winemaking is fluid, with continuous volume movements, necessary compliance tracking, and blending adjustments required to produce a balanced final product. ERPs typically aren’t capable of handling this degree of dynamism. Without the right tools to track these critical processes, wineries have to create workaround systems that can add complexity, create bottlenecks, and slow down production.
3. Limited Barrel and Vessel Tracking
   Each barrel has unique attributes that impact the wine—from cooperage and age to the previous vintages it’s held. ERPs tend to lump barrels into general “groups,” failing to capture essential details. Since barrels aren’t cheap, this lack of detail impacts quality and limits the full potential of these high-value assets.
4. Not Intuitive, and Too Generic for Winery Workflows
   ERPs are often complex and not built with winery workflows in mind. These systems, designed for broad application, don’t always translate well to the hands-on, highly specialized work of winery teams. This leaves winery teams doing double duty, managing critical production data outside the ERP in spreadsheets or other external tools. Fermentation tracking, program allocation management, TTB reporting, blend tracking, and lab analyses are all left disjointed, making cross-departmental collaboration an uphill battle.

The Better Approach: Pairing ERP with Purpose-Built Wine Production Solutions

To really make the most of your tech investment, pairing ERP with software purpose-built for wine production is the way to go. This lets wineries leverage the best of both worlds—tailored winery management and insights with an ERP’s structured financial backbone.

Designed for Flexibility

Unlike traditional manufacturing, the process of making wine varies year by year and requires an ability to adapt to changes in raw materials, climate, and countless other factors. ERPs—designed for industries where processes can be more rigidly defined—don’t offer the flexibility or insight that wineries need to operate smoothly.

Wine production management software is designed to handle everything that makes winemaking unique, from tracking vineyard sources to winery compliance reporting and traceability to managing blend compositions. It’s built for wineries, making it easier to adapt to the inevitable surprises each harvest season brings.

Modern, API-based solutions make it easy to connect your ERP with the specialized tools wineries need. The key is choosing a solution designed with integration in mind so that data flows seamlessly across departments. This eliminates silos, ensures consistency between production and finance, and empowers teams to make faster, more informed decisions. At InnoVint, we designed our platform with API integration from the ground up.

Why Cloud-Based Systems Are Better (versus On Premise)

• Accessibility and Real-Time Data: Cloud solutions offer real-time data access from any location, giving winery teams the flexibility to work seamlessly across departments, even in remote or vineyard settings. With everyone on the same page, decisions are made faster and with more accuracy.
• Scalability Without IT Burden: Cloud platforms scale with the winery’s growth without requiring costly infrastructure upgrades or the upkeep of on-prem servers. This eliminates the need for on-site IT resources and maintenance, which can reduce both time and expenses.
• Automatic Updates and Lower Cost of Ownership: Cloud systems are typically updated automatically, ensuring wineries are always using the latest version with minimal downtime. This approach provides wineries with continuous improvements without the logistical challenges and costs associated with manual upgrades.

Announcing the InnoVint and Business Central Integration

In partnership with Amican Group, which brings over 25 years of experience working with and customizing ERPs for the wine industry, we’re excited to announce that InnoVint now integrates seamlessly with Business Central. This integration brings a new level of efficiency and accuracy to winery operations. Key workflows such as managing fruit costs, tracking bulk inventory and overheads, managing dry goods, and allocating costs to finished case goods are simplified and automated. This powerful integration eliminates manual data entry, improves visibility across teams, and ensures accurate costing from vineyard to bottle.

Let’s take a closer look at the four main integration points that make this connection so impactful.

Fruit Cost Management

Forecasting and executing harvest is a critical yet complex effort for all winery teams. Fruit costs are typically the largest cost center for producing the finished product, and finance teams spend a lot of time reconciling to ensure accuracy. The integration between InnoVint and Business Central simplifies the entire process. Grape contracts in InnoVint calculate and track fruit costs year over year, allowing wineries to forecast costs based on historical averages and crop estimates. As harvest progresses, the software helps track contract fulfillment and reconcile fruit weight tags with agreements, ensuring costs are accurate and up to date.

Once recorded, fruit costs automatically flow into Business Central, providing the finance team with real-time visibility. Cost backdating ensures that any adjustments made post-harvest are accurately reflected, with updated costs flowing through production into finished case goods.

Bulk Inventory and Overhead Cost Tracking

ERP overhead cost allocations are very basic and typically get spread across all production volumes. These costs, over time, can lead to inaccurate COGS and cut into gross margins. With the integration, wineries can easily add overhead costs like custom crush, labor, utilities, or freight into InnoVint. These costs are automatically updated at the lot level, providing full visibility into a detailed audit trail of all cost changes associated with each lot. Once recorded in InnoVint, these costs are automatically sent to Business Central and posted to the general ledger automatically, saving time and reducing the risk of manual errors.

Dry Goods Management

Business Central acts as the source of truth for dry goods purchase orders and receiving. Once dry goods are received in Business Central, the data flows into InnoVint, where it becomes accessible for day-to-day winery activities like additions, bottling, and packaging.

As dry goods are consumed through these activities, their inventory levels and costs are automatically reflected in InnoVint. Depletions are then sent back to Business Central, ensuring inventory volumes remain accurate across both systems. Costs associated with dry goods are tracked in InnoVint under specific categories like “additions” or “packaging” and flow seamlessly into Business Central’s chart of accounts for financial reporting.

Costing for Finished Case Goods

During bottling and packaging in InnoVint, packaging inventory and costs are automatically applied to finished case goods. Once bottling is complete, the finished case goods inventory and COGS are updated in Business Central in real-time. Additional costs capitalized after bottling can also be seamlessly allocated to case goods lots, ensuring all costs are captured and accounted for.

Want to learn how this could impact your winery? Schedule a demo today.