House of Smith, Washington State’s largest winemaker-owned winery, faced challenges with complex, legacy technology. They lacked a single source of truth to track necessary winery data and access reports to inform key business decisions. Additionally, there was a lot of wasted effort in duplicate, manual data entry. With a plan to scale wine production by 35% within two years, they realized the need for an upgrade to the technology they used to run their winery business – from grape to consumer – to streamline their operations and get access to better reporting and insights.
InnoVint’s wine production software emerged as a promising partner, along with Business Central, Microsoft’s cloud-based ERP system, and Commerce7, a modern direct-to-consumer solution.
Many wine businesses find themselves reliant on outdated, legacy systems that cause multiple bottlenecks, frustrated users, and siloed data. House of Smith had been using QuickBooks, JDE Blend, and Orion WIMS, and was no exception.
“We were stuck 2 decades in the past with disconnected operations and duplicated manual efforts in reporting and reconciliation, I knew we needed a complete overhaul to modernize our systems.”
– Lisa Kaplan, VP of Sales Operations
Without a trusted, single source of truth, House of Smith lacked the visibility to improve production planning and execution, control costs, optimize sales, and boost profits. With the company’s growth projections, it was evident a technological transformation was needed. They sought to adopt modern tools to unify and streamline business data spanning production, inventory, sales, and offer clear financial insight. Most importantly, these systems needed to work together seamlessly.
Initial Pain Points:
Once House of Smith committed to Amican Group to support the implementation of Microsoft Business Central with 365WineTrade and achieve its enterprise resource planning (ERP) goals, the search was on for a compatible wine production software partner. This led them to InnoVint.
What set InnoVint apart was its purpose-built solution for enterprise wine producers, modern APIs for quick and easy integration, and trusted relationships with complementary software solutions like Commerce7 for direct-to-consumer sales and Amican Group to support Microsoft Business Central for ERP.
“InnoVint’s web-based technology has been a game-changer for our winemaking team, allowing the entire crew to interact with the software, reducing paperwork, simplifying work orders, streamlining analysis, and allowing all crew members to feel more involved in the winemaking process. Information is easy to find and readily available, helping us to communicate better. The program is intuitive and visually appealing. I am happy we made the investment and hope that our wines are better because of it.”
– Natalie Jones, Director of Wine Production
Lisa Kaplan weighs in: “We looked at other wine production platforms, but InnoVint stood out. It could be molded to fit our specific operational needs, and its compatibility with our new ERP system sealed the deal.”
Determining where and how to start a project of this size was a critical decision. It was imperative that transforming the entire winery tech stack did not disrupt the upcoming harvest. The best, most effective path forward was to implement InnoVint first – to streamline production and operations. In under six weeks, InnoVint was up and running, bringing about immediate benefits in management visibility across departments. From there, InnoVint and Amican worked together behind the scenes to ensure a smooth transition to Business Central. Together, they designed an integration to support cohesion across systems and winery departments.
As a result of the efficient onboarding and partnership throughout, InnoVint quickly gained the trust of House of Smith’s winemaking, finance, and compliance teams.“InnoVint has been very transparent with their release roadmap and ensured our visions aligned at every step of onboarding and through regular check-ins,” says Lisa.
House of Smith has achieved winery solution optimization. Their systems and teams now operate in harmony, leading to more engaged and educated users who feel empowered. Data is no longer siloed, providing accessibility to real-time reporting and insights, giving them a better view of the overall health of the business.
A centralized hub for production and inventory management paired with intuitive reporting has made monthly reconciliations a breeze. The team is now reclaiming valuable time previously lost to manual processes and troubleshooting errors. Finance is enhancing their cost accounting methods thanks to granular and reliable visibility into SKU-based costing. Overall, the team feels better equipped to make informed business decisions as they continue to scale.
Key Benefits
Benefiting from InnoVint’s extensive industry experience and forward-thinking approach to harnessing technology for winery success, House of Smith found a trusted partner to support their unique challenges now and into the future. As House of Smith looks to the future, they are excited to work with InnoVint to meet their growth goals. The teams ensure alignment through regular monthly check-ins and an ongoing dialogue. “The InnoVint team has been a pleasure to work with! They’re receptive to our feedback and involve us in future plans,” says Lisa.
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