TIPSA modernizes wine industry; launches VinoTEC NEXT on Dynamics 365 Business Central Online

Key customer outcomes

– Eliminated data silos and management of disconnected systems.

– Streamlined reporting to provide timely business insights.

– Simplified compliance with industry and regional regulations.

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VinoTEC, a Partner Success Story

TIPSA has been an expert in the wine industry since 2002, providing solutions that enable more than 400 wineries in Spain and Portugal to improve business processes using industry best practices for digital transformation. The company’s VinoTEC solution helps these businesses manage every step of production, from sourcing raw agricultural products and overseeing distribution to financial reporting and customer relationship management. Having a unified solution for all areas of operation is incredibly important because the wine industry is highly regulated and requires special attention on issues to quality metrics, traceability, and regulatory reporting required by different institutions, countries, and regions.

Using Microsoft cloud to streamline winery operations

Originally, VinoTEC was an on-premises and private cloud solution built on Navision, evolving with the platform as it transitioned to Microsoft Dynamics NAV and then Dynamics 365 Business Central. In April 2021, the company announced the release of VinoTEC NEXT, a re-engineered SaaS solution ready to run on Dynamics 365 Business Central online and delivered through Microsoft AppSource.

This change has allowed TIPSA to leverage the full power of Microsoft cloud services, including Dynamics 365 apps, Power Platform, and Microsoft 365, for enabling comprehensive solutions for wine industry customers.

“The benefits of the Microsoft cloud are very clear to customers in terms of privacy, scalability, and flexibility –you can run your business from your smartphone or tablet in a fast, reliable way without worrying about infrastructure challenges,” said Andrés Sáenz, Marketing Manager for TIPSA. “Plus, the possible integrations with Microsoft Teams, Microsoft Outlook, and other apps in the cloud ecosystem can add significant productivity and efficiency gains.”

Move to Dynamics 365 Business Central drives innovation and growth opportunities

To transition to the Dynamics 365 platform, TIPSA sought the help of partner Innova Advanced Consulting, a Microsoft ISV Development Center. Innova has a special relationship with Microsoft research and development teams when it comes to providing technical services for Microsoft partners to scale projects, refine existing solutions, or reduce the time it takes to bring new solutions to market.

Working with Innova, TIPSA determined that the best way to take advantage of the new platform was to break up VinoTEC into smaller apps. This new coding paradigm would allow TIPSA to innovate, expand to adjacent industries, and deliver new features faster by designing a large scale and efficient continuous implementation and deployment policy (CI/CD) that provides a new version each month and embraces Microsoft’s lifecycle for Business Central online.

This SaaS cloud approach allows VinoTEC’s customers to easily augment their management solutions through Microsoft AppSource, the marketplace of certified apps where they can find tailored line-of-business partner solutions that work with the products they already use.

In just five months, TIPSA and Innova re-designed, re-implemented and launched all 14 new VinoTEC NEXT apps according to Microsoft’s Universal Code Initiative. “Innova helped us define the scope of the new ecosystem, decide which functionality should be re-structured, and determine best practices for deploying the new apps,” said Sáenz.

“In a second stage, we have worked together to create a migration toolkit that will help all of our Dynamics NAV existing customers seamlessly transition to the new solution built in Dynamics 365 Business Central, so they can successfully access the benefits of the new Microsoft SaaS platform.”

Strong demand from new and existing customers

Nine months after launching the new applications, TIPSA already has a dozen new customers on board, including Bodegas Vega de Yuco S.A.T. in Spain’s Canary Islands. In 2020, the winery recognized the need to digitize business processes and unify data so that it could reduce IT costs, simplify reporting, and gain business insights to increase competitiveness.

After moving to VinoTEC NEXT, processes that previously took hours or days of manual work can now be accomplished with a few clicks.

“It is an important qualitative leap in the integrated management of our operations across departments,” said Rafael Espino, CEO and Owner of Bodegas Vega de Yuco. “VinoTEC NEXT on Dynamics 365 Business Central online has allowed us to streamline, automate, and systematize our processes and fundamentally achieve the interconnection we needed in our winery.” “The new software has allowed us to integrate the management of sales and the traceability of our wines in the same solution, so we can guarantee the consumer a safe and quality product,” said María José Méndez, Innovation and Digital Transformation Manager at Bodegas Vega de Yuco.

When it comes to existing customers, migrating to the new Microsoft cloud-based solution offers significant benefits. Bodega Doña Felisa, a family business dedicated to producing and selling select wines in Andalusia, initially used VinoTEC to unify data and processes dispersed across multiple systems from multiple vendors and reduce quarterly reporting times from days to hours. With the new SaaS environment offered by Dynamics 365 Business Central, the winery is not only able to benefit from the security and scalability of the Microsoft cloud, but can also expand its solution, using Dynamics 365 Sales to manage customer relationships and Power Apps to create apps for managing wine tourism operations, developing loyalty programs, and maintaining highly segmented communications.

“Our winery was in a significant growth phase, and we wanted to unify ways of working, eliminate management of disconnected applications, and streamline operational processes by placing our customers, visitors, and collaborators at the center of our business strategy,” said Julia Losantos, Technical Director and Winemaker at Bodegas Doña Felisa. “Working with a platform that is managed and supervised by Microsoft gives us peace of mind, and having TIPSA as a technology partner with its experience in the sector guarantees us permanent compliance with the specific regulations of our industry.”

Positioning the business for future success

The move to Dynamics 365 Business Central online has given TIPSA more flexibility and agility to deliver solutions that drive customer innovation and grow new business.

“The new platform makes it easier to always be up to date in terms of security and compliance, deploy new features and bring tailored functionality to market quickly for customers in multiple industries,” said Sáenz.

With the new VinoTEC apps available on AppSource, the company is also getting visibility in new markets, with inquiries coming in from countries like Italy, France, South Africa, Argentina, and the United States, giving it the option to explore moving into new geographies.

In the immediate future, TIPSA plans to expand innovative functionality around Dynamics 365, Azure, and third-party technologies. Sáenz continued, “We will definitely be looking to grow in areas like data analysis, IoT systems, and e-commerce to further innovate. Dynamics 365 Business Central and our work with Innova have really set us up to bring new functionality to our customers much easier and faster.”