GENERAL IT SERVICES
Technology Solutions We Bring to Bear and Specialized Services
How else can we help?
In addition to the industry expert support provided by our Grape Squad, and in addition to the collection of third-party technology solutions the Grape Squad has curated over the years (under the direction of our client wineries - our Supported Ecosystem), we directly offer a range of technology services to handle as many of our clients' needs as we can.
Our primary partner is Revel Systems for Point Of Sale. We've been Certified Revel Resellers since 2014 and we are experts at getting Revel to work for complex winery operations.
We are also tightly partnered with Kaseya. Through Kaseya we have a wide range of very mature general IT products and services we can bring to bear.
Our capabilities include:
-
Point Of Sale (as part of a commerce ecosystem)
-
Business Resilience Services to keep the lights on
-
Infrastructure Services to connect systems (physical and cloud)
-
Professional Services for custom software development
-
Consulting to help with the big questions
Follow the links below for more detail.
POINT OF SALE
For most wineries, Point Of Sale is the most mission critical business system they have to deal with. In 2014 WineryConnect was hired by a winery to do a formal evaluation of POS systems. Based on that evaluation we became Certified Revel Resellers, and the Grape Squad is now absolutely expert at getting Revel to work for complex winery operations or working with wineries to decide when and if they want to shift from a simpler solution like Square to a more fully featured solution.
BUSINESS RESILIENCE SERVICES
Beyond Point Of Sale, there are a range of technology solutions which are critical to long-term stability, but often overlooked because they are only needed in emergency situations, at which point it is too late if they aren't already in place.
These include:
-
Security (network, email, etc.)
-
Backup
-
IT Operations
-
Audit and Compliance
PROFESSIONAL SERVICES
When no commercially available solution works, we offer high quality and affordable custom software development services, including:
-
Custom Systems Integration and Automation
-
Custom Development
-
Formal Technology Assessments or Evaluations
If you need help, please Contact Us.
CONSULTING
There are times, particularly when a new winery is laying out plans or even looking for investment, when no particular solution or support offering is appropriate till some basic questions have been answered (or at least identified and clarified).
As an example, one of our bigger clients decided in 2014 they needed to make a fundamental change in their technology, starting with their Point Of Sale. They hired us on a consulting basis for 3 months during which time we did a formal evaluation with their team of some 20 POS solutions. The result was a detailed multi-tab spreadsheet which captured every nuanced requirement we could for this large, multi-location operation, and an Executive Overview document detailing the reasoning behind our collective decisions.
If you need help figuring out where to start, let us know.
What We Do - Services
POINT OF SALE
Cornerstone of the Ecosystem
Revel Systems POS - Hall Wines | Revel Systems
While every winery needs to deal with a variety of different technologies across their operations, typically the most critical business system is the Point Of Sale (POS) system. Most wineries have active tasting room and retail activity, and many wineries also have restaurants, host weddings and events, and so on. The POS is central to all these activities, and a substantial and flexible POS system is required.
Importantly, however, there is no one size fits all solution for wineries - in the POS arena or any other. The Grape Squad has worked with growing wineries for over a decade and helped them make trade-off decisions around their technology portfolio as they've grown.
When Hazlitt 1852 Vineyards contracted WineryConnect in 2014 to evaluate POS systems they knew what they didn’t want. Hazlitt had plenty of experience with old POS systems which were hard to maintain, inflexible, and difficult or impossible to integrate with other business systems. They were ready for something new.
By working out a detailed RFP with Hazlitt’s key personnel, and then working with Hazlitt to evaluate those solutions over a 3-month period, WineryConnect arrived at the best solution for them with Revel POS Systems, a next-generation POS provider focused on winery operations. WineryConnect has now partnered with Revel to deploy and support the Revel POS, and we have extended its capabilities with our own offerings. Over the years WineryConnect has helped Hazlitt grow their Revel deployment across multiple businesses at different locations as well as at some 2 festivals per week across the US throughout the summer.
For more information check out this PDF: WineryConnect Offers A Complete Winery Solution
Revel POS supports:
-
Tasting Room Sales
-
Offline Operation
-
Cafés and Restaurants
-
Gift Shop
-
Loyalty Programs
-
Flexible Discounts
-
Gift Card Programs
-
Staff and Shift Management
-
Off-Site Sales
-
Real-Time Analysis
-
Web-Based Reporting on Any Device
-
Customizable Options
-
Employee Training
What We Do - Services
BUSINESS RESILIENCE SERVICES
A Stitch in Time ...
Reliability, Availability, Security
The Grape Squad works with wineries to progressively tune what technologies they use to support their business objectives, to train staff to use those solutions, and to help management get to the business reporting they need to support decision making. Still, all this progress can be at risk if precautions aren't taken.
Our Business Resiliency solutions provide comprehensive security measures, including data backup and disaster recovery, to ensure uninterrupted business continuity. With our solutions, you can safeguard your critical data and ensure that your business continues to operate smoothly even in the face of unforeseen circumstances.
We offer a wide range of solutions, and are always looking for new offerings which benefit our clients. Here are a few of our key capabilities:
Unified Backup
While many of the solutions we support live in the cloud and are automatically backed up, most of our clients still depend on offline data (things like Excel spreadsheets they've crafted to support their nuanced operations around wine production). The ability to recover these documents in the case of disaster, or even just to retrieve previous versions when data has been inadvertently overwritten or deleted, can be critically important.
Beyond this, some cloud solutions you would presume are fully backed up are not. Microsoft 365 and Google Workspace, for example, do not actually support full, versioned backup of business data out of the box. We can add this capability to those solutions.
More details can be found at Unified Backup.
Security
Each advance in our ability to communicate electronically and to do business from anywhere at any time comes with an unfortunate increase in ways bad actors can disrupt the normal course of business. Luckily, this in turn gives rise to ever more powerful solutions to keep business data safe.
We offer a range of solutions like Graphus - an AI powered email security solution which stops and learns from threats other solutions miss. VulScan identifies IT vulnerabilities enabling the Grape Squad to resolve them rapidly. Dark Web ID uncovers compromised credentials being spread on the dark web. With these and other solutions the Grape Squad is equipped to help keep your data safe.
IT Operations
The Grape Squad uses a solution called Autotask to power our service desk as a centralized help desk for all our clients. Some of our larger clients also have service desk requirements of their own. In these cases the Grape Squad acts as an adjunct to the winery's internal IT department and we can help set them up with their own instance of Autotask, train them on how to use it, help set up custom workflow rules and so on.
Maybe most interestingly, we offer a set of solutions called IT Glue which includes a range of features from a password vault (so all staff can keep track of their various passwords and keep them secure), to network diagraming, checklists, security features like audit trail, version history and SOC 2 compliance.
What We Do - Services
INFRASTRUCTURE SERVICES
Tying Everything Together
Getting Things to Talk
Even as more and more business solutions are delivered from the "cloud" and are accessible anywhere from any device, the need for on-site wiring, WiFi networking, and other physical systems infrastructure is not going away any time soon. In addition, there are in fact more and more "smart" devices on the market which, depending on the size of your organization, may need to be managed as part of your organizational infrastructure.
Here are a few of our key capabilities:
Networking
Our Point Of Sale offering typically comes with a range of physical networking components to securely and reliably connect the various components of your POS system.
Most wineries also provide robust wireless access for their customers, which can be particularly problematic in large remote locations with requirements for indoor and outdoor coverage. Here we offer a robust set of solutions called Datto Networking. Our Grape Squad will work with your team to define your WiFi networking requirements and we can then deliver and install your WiFi network on a Try Before You Buy basis.
Beyond this, we offer a full range of networking routers and switches to handle any network configuration.
RMM/Endpoint Management
Remote Management and Monitoring (RMM) is a service by which our Grape Squad can remotely and proactively monitor our clients' networks and computers in a cost-effective and reliable manner. Specifically, we leverage Datto RMM to enable the Grape Squad to deliver these capabilities.
For larger organizations and/or complex networks we also offer a solution called Traverse to enable the Grape Squad to deliver robust network performance monitoring.
Cloud System Integration
Over the years we have integrated the systems our clients use in the ways our clients have requested. We call these existing integrations "Connections" and you can see our collection of Connections here.
In addition, as noted above, we can create custom system integrations as part of our Professional Services offerings.