How Radgonske gorice save 40 hours of work during each harvest month

The quality of wine is born in the vineyard. That’s a fact that any expert enologyst will reassure: you can not make a top quality wine without the top quality grapes. This is so because during the winemaking process, the enologyst must build on top of the terroir, the characteristic of the micro-environment in which the grape berries have grown. And to produce only the highest quality wines, the grapes must be picked selectively and by hand. Grape harvest is a festive of it’s own: it’s the busiest time of the year and a very important step towards a great vintage. During this period, the whole winery team is working constantly: grape pickers, grape logistics, grape intake, crunching, as well as the cellar operations are all in full swing. Everything has to be executed smoothly – and this is a huge organizational effort. Since the harvest and logistics are happening in the vineyard, at Vineyard Management, we have developed a Harvest app. Vineyard Management harvest app was built to save vineyard managers time - a few hours per day, every day of the harvest. In 2017 the app was applied by Radgonske gorice winery.

Implementation of Harvest app on Radgonske gorice winery

In Radgonske Gorice, they employ on average more than 150 pickers annually, who work roughly for 1,5 month to hand pick grapes on more than 500 hectares of the vineyards. Four vineyard managers need to manage seasonal workers as well as vineyard staff so that during the harvest time, everything runs smoothly. And to make the matter fair, each of those pickers needs to be paid according to their performance. The quality of wine is born in the vineyard. That’s a fact that any expert enologyst will reassure: you can not make a top quality wine without the top quality grapes. This is so because during the winemaking process, the enologyst must build on top of the terroir, the characteristic of the micro-environment in which the grape berries have grown. And to produce only the highest quality wines, the grapes must be picked selectively and by hand. Grape harvest is a festive of it’s own: it’s the busiest time of the year and a very important step towards a great vintage. During this period, the whole winery team is working constantly: grape pickers, grape logistics, grape intake, crunching, as well as the cellar operations are all in full swing. Everything has to be executed smoothly – and this is a huge organizational effort. Since the harvest and logistics are happening in the vineyard, at Vineyard Management, we have developed a Harvest app. Vineyard Management harvest app was built to save vineyard managers time - a few hours per day, every day of the harvest. In 2017 the app was applied by Radgonske gorice winery.

The record keeping which was previously done with pen and paper, is now simply done on a smartphone – with a proven, simple user interface that only requires 2 taps for any operation. All of the data is collected in the process, and the rest of the calculation “In order to do this, we were spending hours crunching data about how much each of the pickers should be paid, “ recalls Gorazd Kovačič from Radgonske Gorice. “With Vineyard Management harvest application, this data is gathered in the vineyards, and calculation of payment of the workers, based on their work performance, is automated - saving each of us 10 hours per month of time we would instead use for crunching data on our computers.” Vineyard Management application is installed on the smartphones and tablets of everyone involved with the collection of data about the harvest progress. The application is completely configurable, so it can adapt to the way in which the vineyard managers prefer to work, and to the way in which the workers are used of being paid. is completely automated. The end result is live, daily, information, about how many kilos of grape each of the pickers picked, along with multiple performance indicators of the harvest. Each of the pickers therefore gets paid according to how well they worked, and the payment is calculated for every day.

“It is crucial for motivation that people who work better, or faster, are paid more” recalls Gorazd Kovačič from Radgonske Gorice, and Vineyard Management Harvest module allows them to do just that, without using any additional time to achieve that. Increase picking efficiency by 15-25% compared to non-metered picking.

All of the data, collected at the vineyard by the staff, as well as by vineyard managers, gets synchronized to the cloud automatically as soon as there is connectivity – therefore the system works perfectly even in the areas where the signal is patchy.

Vineyard Management Harvest system is so adaptable, that the roles of different people, the mode of payment (whether therefore gets paid according to how well they worked, and the payment is calculated for every day. per kilos, per hours, or a hybrid of some kind) can be configured before every harvest, depending on the way of work in organization.

The configurability is so good, that the system is not even suitable only for grapes harvesting, but instead also for harvesting of the other fruits.

“Automated data crunching, and on-field collection not only saves a lot of time, but also eliminates space for errors: if you are putting data on paper once, then entering it from paper to computer, then manipulating it there – you have a lot of space to make a mistake. With Vineyard Management Harvest, the data is entered once, so no mistake could be made later on, “ adds Matic Serc.

Adoption of Vineyard Management Harvest to Radgonske gorice winery during the initial season left everyone involved happy: even the oldest member of the vineyard management team, who was just before retirement, and was initially sceptical, finally picked up the application, and couldn’t stop using it in the end. Plus, since harvest is the happiest time of the year, Vineyard Management team had a blast as well: "We're in a beautiful business. Getting out of office, breathing fresh morning air and running around vineyards when everyone is harvesting is my favourite part of the work day, but once you see your tool is an integral part for measuring this massive interaction which is happening during the harvest, and you observe it all happening smoothly - it's hard to describe the feeling." recalls Matic Šerc about the adventure from the first season with Vineyard Management Harvest. Due to the Vineyard Management harvest application, each vineyard manager of Radgonske gorice winery manages to save around 15 hours of work per harvest. Which means that all four of them save 60 hours of crunching data and sitting behind the computer in a month and a half of harvest. On a monthly level, the winery saves between 30 and 40 hours of overtime work, during the harvest time, that would otherwise need to be paid to vineyard managers.

Gain real-time insight into harvest

With already three successful seasons under our belt, the system being tested in multiple organizations, we are happy to claim that Vineyard Management Harvest really is a must-have if you want to keep your workers motivated and paid fairly. Statistics show that metered picking can increase picking efficiency by 15-25%, especially if workers are also paid based on their performance. Namely, performance-related payment motivates pickers to work better if done properly.