2024 — Year in review

Claret, the product

We are, ultimately, a product team. And so a fair percentage of our time is spent working on our product. We thrive when we are making Claret better for our users. This year we made a lot of neat updates and introduced some entirely new features that we’re very excited about.

‍

Farm

Crop Supply Planning has been updated and optimized to clearly compare demand and supply, building out crop demand through recipes and demand further along the supply chain.

Work continues on making this module clearly highlight positions at all levels of the hierarchy and we’ve got some exciting developments coming in 2025.

‍

Make

Earlier in the year, Make Planning received key upgrades, including better Gantt chart handling for vintages, faster performance, and direct editing of Routings, Ideal Release Dates, and Child WIP tags. Additionally, exports now respect Vintage filters for greater precision.

More recently, we have added the option to easily copy across Ideal plans to Planned makes both at the Parent and Child WIP level. Gantt Charts can also now display based on either Ideal or Planned release dates.

We’re excited to currently also be working on some performance enhancements for Make Planning that will speed things up for our users.

‍

Sell

Sales Collaboration became even more intuitive with elegant handling of percentage values in exports and improved navigation that respects Item and Customer Group relationships. These refinements ensure cleaner, faster forecasting. Then to round out the year, we released some serious performance enhancements, making Sales Collaboration run like a well-oiled machine.

In Long Term Planning, we simplified long-term forecasting by enhancing how inactive items are managed and making growth percentage updates seamless. View configurations were also improved, displaying only relevant sale types for new rows.

‍

Budget

Yes, that’s right, we’ve actually spent a fair bit of time this year starting to build out our budgeting features. There has been a lot going on behind the scenes and we have started piloting some features with existing clients. Stay tuned for more in this space in 2025 (but if you want to learn more now about what is coming - feel free to get in touch!)

‍

Master Data

This year, we enhanced data flexibility and control with improved import options, duplicate entry handling, and the ability to download unimported rows for quick review. Hierarchy management was also streamlined, allowing renaming and standardized oversight for smoother workflows.

‍

‍

Claret Profit Maximizer: transforming blending decisions

This year, we proudly introduced Claret Profit Maximizer, our specialized consulting service designed to revolutionize blending decisions for wine and spirits companies. Launched in 2024, this innovative service combines advanced optimization techniques with deep industry expertise, empowering producers to uncover the most profitable pathways for their ingredients—from grapes and barrel lots to final blends.

The response has been exceptional. Our first clients have already leveraged Claret Profit Maximizer to enhance their blending strategies, optimize resources, and maximize profits. By providing tailored insights and real-world solutions, we’re helping our partners not only refine their craft but also achieve significant bottom-line improvements. We look forward to expanding this service and driving greater success for the industry in 2025 and beyond.

‍

Working with clients

Of course, we wouldn’t be here without our clients. We’ve loved onboarding all our new clients this year and have worked closely with our existing clients on some major projects. Our Case Studies with Duckhorn and Cline, and upcoming case studies with Iconic Wineries of British Columbia and others have highlighted for us the benefits our clients are getting from using Claret, and that makes us happy!

The feedback and enhancement requests we’ve received from clients have also been greatly appreciated. We use this to shape Claret and inform our development pipelines. So keep them coming!

‍

Regional growth

Our clients are across the world, and the locations we service continues to grow. This year we’ve had opportunities to learn more about how wine and spirits are made, and have continued to make sure Claret is being built to cater for the nuances in beverage alcohol production, across products and regions. Having team members in different time zones means we are working on and supporting Claret almost around the clock. It also means we know the difference between Pinot Gris and Pinot Grigio and can have some very robust discussions about what a thong is.

‍

Learning and growing

We don’t know everything. We all love to learn and we leverage tools that others are working on because we know where our specialties lie. This year has seen some significant learning about:

Business

1. How beverage alcohol companies, and vineyard companies, budget and plan
2. How whisky is made
3. The impacts of significant weather events on planning and planning processes (which leads to us thinking about how Claret can better support the sort of agility needed to adjust plans these days)
4. The ‘glut’ of wine globally and how planning can help manage this

Technology

1. The new versions of Laravel and Vue and the cool stuff they offer
2. Tools to help with onboarding users
3. Stripe and payment gateways in general
4. A raft of Marketing tools
5. CI/CD processes
6. AI. We had to mention it. Even though ‘AI’ covers a fair bit these days. But we have been going deep on this in some areas. (More on this in 2025!)
   

Members of our team have also been lucky enough to visit areas away from home which means we’ve learnt more about the beverage alcohol industries in Portugal, Brazil, South East Asia and India. (Which also means we’ve tasted some delightful beverages in all of these places as well!)