When You Can't Afford to Hire an Analyst

“We’re a tiny outfit. I can’t afford to hire an analyst.”

That’s a quote from Ashley Trout, owner/winemaker at Brook & Bull and Vital Wines in Walla Walla, who spoke during last week’s virtual Wine Industry Technology Symposium.

She’s not alone. Trout and Brook & Bull are part of the very “long tail” of wineries, in the US and around the world, who are big enough for wine lovers to know and love, and also small enough to have neither the resources nor the bandwidth to get the most out of their data.

She doesn’t really know what Tableau is, or Qlik, or any of the other platforms that “data people” use.

That’s the point, actually. She doesn’t really WANT to know those things.

What she wants is to make wine. That’s what she knows. That’s what she loves. That’s her purpose.

However, data is valuable to the future of her business. She knows that too.

Although she doesn’t want to learn the tools that “data people” use, she does need to know the information that “data people” know about her customers.

Information like, who are her biggest buyers?

And, what have they bought before?

And, what will keep them interested in buying more in the future?

Although she can’t afford to hire a full-time analyst — something that 82 percent of US wineries also cannot afford to do, according to Silicon Valley Bank — she does need to know information like that in order to stay in business, and to keep making the wines that “wine people” love to love.

That’s what good “data people” do. Deliver that information, without burdening “wine people” with too many of the mechanics or too much of the cost.

At Enolytics we try to do exactly that. We are “data people” who also know wine and business. We listen to what you need to know most, and filter out what is irrelevant to you.

Ultimately, you benefit from data analytics and business intelligence while still doing what you love to do, and what you do best.

The rest — the data stuff — is up to us. We can help.

I look forward to hearing what’s most important to you. Please let me know.

Thank you, as always, for reading —

Cathy