Artificial intelligence (AI) is the word fashionable on everyone’s lips, but how can the drinks industry be better? A recent conference in Prowein has offered some answers.
A recent conference in ProWein has enlightened the way drinks companies can make the most of artificial intelligence (AI). The discussion, entitled “How to maximize AI (even when your company does not budget the budget)”, took place at the ProWein Business Forum during this year’s fair in Düsseldorf.
Preside over the panel was db The editor -in -chief Patrick Schmitt MW, who sat alongside Pam Dillon and Andrew Sussman, the co -founders of the preferained AI drinks recommendation software provider, and Ron Scott, research and development manager at Aolytics.
Schmitt has opened: “I think, as for any major commercial event, you must work to maintain relevance, and a way is through educational seminars, not only on trendy subjects, but tools for business – AI is not only the subject of our profession.”
“Companies at the moment do not budget much more than production and staff to sell what they do; Everything else is a luxury, ”continued Schmitt. “The wine trade is a fragmented company, rich in small -scale operations, and it is shouting for the support of external expertise. It is surely preferable to count on the expert who spent his life developing AI technology, letting you do what you do best, who sells drinks? ”
Indeed, Sussman noted that AI has existed “for a very long time”, explaining that he had started working with him as far as 1991.
One of the recent partnerships of Preferagli was with the British chain of Marks & Spencer supermarkets to develop an AI -powered tool to help customers find bottles they may like.
“You can go through a simple questionnaire to help identify the products that match your tastes,” said Sussman. “It is distilling all the information that would be frankly overwhelming for consumers.”
Although the preferagable software is not a hard coded, which means that the user can request that the answers be given in the voice of a pirate – to use the example that Sussman gave – the company has realized that it was a “functionality, not a bug”, which allows different customers to use a specific tone consistent with its brand.
Aulytics uses AI to understand things on the other side, as explained by Scott: “Aolytics is trying to look at things from the point of view of a producer, not a consumer. The objective of our software is to give a producer the complete image of who buys his wine, where and demography.
This could have major implications for the way producers and retailers present their wines with the consumer, allowing a more targeted approach.
“Marketing is a field that is very low fruits for a generative AI – inviting customers, offering different products according to their purchasing habits, identifying customers to intensify marketing efforts,” said Scott. “They can then generate an extremely personalized marketing campaign to keep them in a wine club, for example.”
It is also an effective means of research, according to Scott, who explained: “We are at a time when you can use a tool to study, discover what is in vogue; These generative AI tools allow us to do more research than we could simply manage with Google Research, for example. ”
Cost savings
As the title of the conference suggested, preferained and aolytics are proud of affordability.
“You can start rock and -roll for € 100 per month – we would have died when we arrived if we had not made the sale price and a price,” said Dillon de Preferaised. “I cannot think of a single customer who has not made money, and most have a return on investment for hundreds of times. It took 10 years and 25 million dollars to build this platform.”
“The calculation of the return on investment has constantly evolved,” added Sussman. “We have to educate people that there are other costs they save, not just the income they earn.”
Sussman also cited an example of a chain of restaurants in the United States which adopted a system of wine recommendation powered by AI, saving the equivalent of two wine pallets each year on free tasting samples for guests.
Aulytics is just as economical, Scott saying that the company “supports cellars ranging from small Mom-And-Pop stores to the big producers”.
The end of experts?
Although AI can rationalize decision -making for consumers and producers, Dillon argued that the expertise of characters such as Masters of Wine and Master Sommeliers, a large number of whom works with Pantables, is always vital, in particular for their tasting notes.
“The last thing we want to do is write code to replace people in this industry; we want to amplify them,” she said. “You can write the most beautiful algorithms in the world, but these algorithms are not beautiful without good data.”
