FLASH! The Best Wine Chooses Winery Pro!
Paloma Vineyard of St. Helena, CA.

• Winery Software - Where We Fit
  
  
• Winter Winery Pro Tours
  
  
• Trade Shows and Demos
  
  
• How We Support You
  
  
• User Group Report
  
  
• TCA Staff Member Profile
  
  
• Web Based Demos Available
  
  
• Winery Pro™ Summary Features

Winter Winery Pro Tours

Traveling and meeting winery owners and operators has been our focus since the beginning of this year. We have been to Walla Walla Washington, Sacramento California and here in our own area at the Barclay & Company tasting room show. One thing folks are seeing is that there are many new winery software products coming to market. In this issue we provide information for you on what makes us different from other winery software solutions.

User Group Report

Email blasting and web based marketing - Using these leveraged tools is one of the most effective methods possible to reach your customer base. Drafting the message can be another challenge - so this User Group meeting with Bryan St. Amant, Owner of Vinter Active will give provide great ideas about the development of marketing messages that really sizzle. Meeting to be held Thursday April 8, 2004 at the TCA office.

Web Based Demos Now Available

Beginning March 8, 2004 we will be offering web based demonstrations of Winery Pro via Netopia eCare. eCare is a fantastic internet-based tool which will allow us to show you Winery Pro via your web browser using a DSL or dialup connection.

Winery Pro™ Summary Features

• At A Glance - Customer Profiles and Sales Info, Wine Clubs, Allocations, Critic Reviews and Inventory Balances
• The Most Advanced Data Query found in any wine software solution
• Telemarketing notes with tickler support the telemarketing process
• Multiple discounting methods
• Wine Club Processing - Invoices, Credit Card Authorizing, Sales Documents
• Assignment of Quick Sale Invoices to Customers
• Accounts Receivable - Outstanding Invoices
• Futures Sales
• Wine Allocations - Multi Level
• Critic and Review Tracking
• Inventory Stock Levels Updated with each sale
• Multiple warehouse tracking
• Wine varietal technical info sheets
• Custom Letters with merge fields To queried customers
• Email to groups with merge fields from within Winery Pro
• Shipping grids for multiple ship methods
• Sales tax calculated by state and/or county
• Customer Kiosk screen for name capture in the tasting room or at special events
• POS Entry for use with mag Readers, bar code scanners and receipt printers
• Over 33 sales and accounting reports
• Kiosk files transport across email for addition to Winery Pro

Winery Software - Where We Fit

In the past two years winery owners have seen an increase in the number of winery software tools being brought to market. We are talking in this month's newsletter about our differences:

• Winery Pro is Marketing and Sales Specific Software - we keep those job functions separate from bulk wine, blending, barrel management and other production specific tasks.
• Winery Pro is Targeted to Smaller Wineries - which has nothing to do with database limitations of FileMaker Pro and everything thing to do with the way a small staff would perform daily work in the software. Our system is Customer Centric and unlike more modular systems, most of the tasks that are performed in Winery Pro occur at the level of the customer and invoices. The design philosophy of our product promotes rapid and easy job functions for a winery with limited staff resources.
• Winery Pro Will Grow with the Winery - Don't be concerned about growth limitations with our solution - the database is highly scalable in terms of the number of customers and sales transactions it will process and store. AND we are currently working on a Winery Pro large winery edition to be released in early 2005 that wineries looking for growth can easily upgrade to.
• Winery Pro Works in the Mac or PC Environment - No problem here, the screens are exactly the same on either computer or in a cross-platform network.
• Winery Pro Talks to External Data Sources - Importing and exporting is efficiently facilitated - our software can talk to SQL or be linked via ODBC. Data is easily exported for integration to outside preference based marketing companies such as VinterActive or web marketing tools such as Vertical Response.
• Winery Pro Can Go Custom - If your winery needs specific features not offered in our software you can always go custom.
• Winery Pro is a Marketing Oriented Solution - Yes we do back office invoicing, point of sale and wine club but what makes us different is in narrow customer profiling and rapid delivery of marketing messages to your customers. To date we have not seen a tool on the market that can be used to query and then take action in the form of bulk email, merged letters, list management and telemarketing as easily and rapidly as ours can.
• Users Drive our Feature Set - The strength of "iterative programming" is that our feature sets are driven by the way our users perform their work. We don't incorporate features and functions just because we can - we ask, listen and incorporate items that our users have requested and truly find useful.

Do you have other questions about our software - give us a call and we will discuss your more specific questions at 707 544-1559.

Trade Shows and Demos

Thursday, April 1, from 8:30 to 11:30 at Abacela Vineyards, Roseburg, Oregon
Friday, April 2, from 8:30 to 11:30, in the Ashland Oregon area. Location TBD
April 22, 2004 1:30 pm - Paso Robles, CA Hampton Suites
April 23, 2004 8:30 am - Temecula, CA Location TBD
May 2004 - Western Colorado Wineries, Location TBD
May 2004 - Northern California - FileMaker in the Wine Industry, Location TBD

Check back on our website for updated demo information!

How We Support You

A goal in developing Winery Pro was to provide a strong cost-effective support system for our users. A list of our support methods include:

• Phone Support
• Instant Messaging
• Email Request
• Fax Request
• eCare by Netoptia - web based support
• Technical Manual 150+ pages with setup checklists
• Beginning and Advanced class instruction
• Quarterly User Group Meetings - to be facilitated for all our users via ICam in 2004

TCA Staff Member Profile - Cael Chappell

A part-time staff member who stays behind the scenes is our web developer Cael Chappell. Cael definitely has an interesting background. He manages our web sites and publishes our Winery Pro newsletter using his extensive technical background in FileMaker and Blue World Lasso. Cael creates and maintains several other projects for a company in Sonoma - Spirits in Stone - African Sculpture.

Cael's background in managing the fine arts retail business has taken him on several trips to Africa where he met with local sculptors, purchased art and oversaw the final export process of the art back to the U.S. He is also an experienced elephant trainer which you see illustrated in the accompanying image.

Cael's worldwide travels have sparked interest for him in collecting and teaching others about foreign currencies. Cael has a large personal collection of paper money and features images and information for fellow currency collectors his web site www.collectpapermoney.com. One other love of Cael's is African baskets so check out his other site www.basketsofafrica.com to learn about different types of Zulu and Swazi baskets - styles and features.

Technology Consulting Alliance © 2001-2003
2841 Cleveland Avenue, Ste. C   Santa Rosa, CA 95403
Phone: (707) 544-1559 | Fax: (707) 544-5090
E-mail: support@tcalliance.com