An End-to-End Solution for Sparkling Production
Chandon evaluated multiple software solutions to fully understand the landscape of options and make the most informed decision. They chose InnoVint for several compelling reasons:
- Real-Time Data, Anytime and Anywhere: InnoVint provides real-time updates across the winemaking process, giving all departments instant access to live data. This enables seamless collaboration and ensures teams have up-to-date information at their fingertips, wherever they are, whenever they need it.
- Designed for Everyone: InnoVint’s user-friendly design ensures that seasoned winemakers, seasonal staff, and new hires can all navigate the system with ease and minimal training.
- Fully Paperless Workflow: InnoVint automates data entry by replacing manual, paper-based processes with a fully digital system. Work orders, tasks, and inventory updates are all managed within the platform, reducing the need for time-consuming duplicate data entry.
- Single Source of Truth: InnoVint consolidates production data into one centralized platform, providing a unified system for tracking and reporting. This ensures consistency in data entry and enables reliable, real-time reporting and decision-making across departments, from winemaking to finance.
- Sparkling Wine Expertise: InnoVint collaborated with Chandon to create a specialized module for sparkling wine production, covering every stage from base wine and dosage through tirage, aging, and final packaging.
Overcoming the fear of change
Change management is notoriously challenging for winemaking teams, where longstanding processes and systems are often deeply ingrained in day-to-day operations. The fear of disrupting workflows can lead many wineries to stick with the status quo, even when inefficiencies and errors are obvious.
Pauline Lhote, Chandon’s Director of Winemaking, shared similar concerns before selecting InnoVint. “I was initially nervous about going digital and switching to InnoVint, especially wondering if the team could adapt. Change can be hard! But InnoVint made the transition much easier than we expected. Their platform is intuitive, and the online training resources were really helpful for our team. Plus, whenever we needed extra support, their team was always available to help us out. Looking back, it was absolutely the right decision—InnoVint has made our processes more efficient and accurate than we ever imagined.”
The Result: A Completely Paperless, Mobile Workflow
With the adoption of InnoVint, Chandon embraced a completely paperless, mobile wine production workflow for their team of 45+ employees. Besides saving a monumental amount of paper, this digital transformation has yielded significant positive outcomes for Chandon:
$75,000 Annual Cost Savings
InnoVint’s paperless workflow eliminated the need for manual and duplicate data entry, previously a full-time role at Chandon. This position, which required one person to enter work order data 12 hours a day, six days a week during harvest, was no longer necessary, saving the winery approximately $75,000 annually.
“In the past, everything was printed… Now, everybody has iPads, and things are happening live. We used to have a winemaking coordinator whose task was to enter data for us, but that role has been eliminated, and we save over $75,000 a year. Now, winemaking creates and submits the work orders themselves—it’s much more controlled.”
– Pauline Lhote, Director of Winemaking
Reduction in Costly Errors
Cellars are filled with non-stop activity, especially during harvest season. InnoVint provides near real-time visibility into cellar operations, helping prevent mistakes in blending, transfers, or additions. For example, a mix-up that could have resulted in a high-value wine being downgraded to a lower price point (e.g., from a $100 bottle to a $24 bottle) can now be avoided, protecting the winery’s revenue and brand reputation. As Riley Sanchez, Chandon’s Assistant Winemaker, puts it, “When I’m watching the system live, I can instantly go out and fix any issues. With a paper-based system and a middleman, you’d be delayed, and the mistake would have already happened.”
Hours Saved for Finance
A key advantage of InnoVint for Chandon has been its ability to provide a single, reliable source of truth for all production data. This centralized system seamlessly integrates with their existing Power BI platform, significantly improving cost accounting accuracy. With real-time access to accurate data, Chandon’s finance team can quickly generate reports and analyses, leading to more informed decisions on pricing, cost management, and production efficiency. Now, they can instantly answer critical questions like “Are our costs aligned with our expectations?” and “Do we have sufficient capacity for the upcoming harvest?” without having to chase down the winemaking team for answers or missing data. This shared language has led to substantial time savings — and fewer unnecessary meetings — across all departments.
Martina Rosell, Chandon’s Senior BP&A Manager, said, “Having live data in the system has improved everything. I don’t have to go to the winemaking team to know what’s happening—now, I can just pull a report and understand everything from tank levels to production losses. InnoVint gives us the detailed information we need to make informed decisions without having to constantly ask for updates. It has eliminated the unnecessary back-and-forth”
Faster Onboarding Time for New Hires
InnoVint’s user-friendly interface and comprehensive training resources dramatically reduced the onboarding times, especially for production roles. What once took days not takes just 1-2 hours. This efficiency boost allowed new hires and seasonal workers to become productive much faster. Additionally, the system’s uninterrupted access eliminated frustrating delays that were common with the previous software. As Pauline shared, “Before InnoVint, if one person was in the system, everyone else had to wait. It was incredibly time-consuming and frustrating. Now, with InnoVint, no one ever says ‘I can’t get in.’”
Quick Payback and High ROI
Thanks to substantial cost and time savings, Chandon recouped its entire investment in InnoVint in just eight months. These efficiencies translate to an impressive 350% return on investment after just three harvests.
Conclusion
Chandon’s partnership with InnoVint has transformed its winemaking operations, delivering real-time data access, reducing errors, and providing significant cost savings. With a fully digital workflow and customized tools for sparkling wine production, Chandon has optimized its processes while maintaining the highest quality standards, setting a new benchmark for efficiency in the wine industry.