Issue link: http://read.dmtmag.com/i/81015
MANAGEMENT Point of Sale Gets a Mobile Makeover By Deborah Parker Wong New systems bring the wine industry into the 21st century ablets like the iPad have added a new level of convenience to mobile sales transactions, but until a few months ago, a hand- held point-of-sale (POS) system designed specifically for wineries was something producers could only dream about. "Until the arrival of mobile com- puting, winery POS systems were tied to expensive, large-footprint terminals," explained Rick Belisle, managing partner of OrderPort, a Bellevue, Wash.-based "software as a service" (SaaS) company. Belisle and business partners Stephen Ratzlaff and Matt Payne turned their attention to developing OrderPort's winery POS and com- merce software about a year ago, when they observed small- and medium-sized wineries struggling to manage their businesses. "We see wineries using dif- ferent, independent systems to manage inventory, wine club ship- ments, their various sales channels, customer service and marketing," Belisle said. "A family-owned win- ery client recently told us that prior to using OrderPort, his wife spent one day a week pulling sales data from three different sources into their accounting system so they could run reports. That time is now being directed back into their oper- ation." CENTRALIZING DATA This scenario is surprisingly com- mon, as wineries of all sizes typical- ly manage data from four primary channels – distributors/wholesal- ers, wine clubs, e-commerce and tasting room sales. The wine industry is a Johnny- come-lately to adopting software as a service, an extension of the application service provider mod- els developed for the Internet in the 1990s. Hosted business applications, such as OrderPort's commerce solutions tailored for businesses of all types, are often referred to as on-demand software and are mainly used for customer relationship management, human resource management, enterprise resource planning and project man- agement. On-demand business applica- tions require little more than an Internet browser and, in this case, an iPad or two, to manage and administer a small- to medium- sized business. OrderPort's soft- ware was developed in a tasting room to ensure that every aspect of the sales cycle was taken into consideration to fully integrate and optimally manage data throughout the winery. At Sleight of Hand Cellars in Walla Walla, Wash., winemaker Trey Busch managed his 3,500-case winery using a cash register and an Excel spreadsheet. When Busch and his partners decided to build 52 VINEYARD & WINERY MANAGEMENT SEPT - OCT 2012 WWW.VWM-ONLINE.COM