The client's world
Licata Vini is one of Belgium's leading importers and traders of Italian wines. Their range is broad, their expertise runs deep, and their customer base spans everyone from home wine enthusiasts to hospitality professionals. Early in the internet era, they spotted the commercial opportunity: they started with a static website, grew it into one of the first online wine webshops in Belgium, and became a digital player in their niche.
A wine catalogue isn't managed like a regular product line. Every bottle has a story, a region, a grape variety, a flavour profile, an occasion. Licata's challenge wasn't just showing their range online, it was getting the right wine to the right customer. That called for more than a standard webshop.
What no longer worked
The pace of technological change made Licata realise, back in 2014, that they needed an external partner to stay ahead. Managing an increasingly complex platform in-house was no longer an option.
The core of the problem played out on several levels. The existing platform couldn't capture the depth of their catalogue. Stock and orders weren't syncing with their ERP system, the heart of their logistics operation. And the biggest commercial question remained unanswered: how do you recommend the right wine to someone who doesn't always know what they're looking for?
Inventis built a custom e-commerce platform
Inventis developed a bespoke webshop that goes beyond a catalogue with a shopping cart. The platform is built to support Licata's operational workings, not just their online presence.
ERP integration as the backbone
The ERP system is the beating heart of Licata's logistics operation. Through a combination of real-time and scheduled syncs, product data, stock, and prices are continuously updated. Orders and reservations placed through the webshop are fed back to the ERP immediately, while less time-sensitive data is processed through periodic syncs. This keeps the online and operational sides working from the same, current data, without double management or errors from outdated stock levels.
Intelligent wine recommender
The biggest commercial challenge was translating customer preferences into concrete wine advice. Inventis developed a search engine that checks the full range against 200 parameters, based on taste preferences, purchase history, and search behaviour. The result: personalised recommendations that match the occasion and the taste of the visitor.
Tasting module
Every year, Licata organises dozens of private and public wine tastings. Inventis developed a registration module that lets visitors easily sign up for tastings and build their own personal tasting list. This gives every visitor a clear overview, for each event, of which wines they can taste and where. The module processes dozens of events a year, with tens to hundreds of registrations per tasting, supporting smooth organisation and an optimal visitor experience.
Technology
The webshop runs on our own PHP-based CMS. This proprietary technology lets us offer maximum flexibility and fully tailor the webshop to the client's specific processes and ambitions.
The result
Today, Licata Vini manages its catalogue, customer relationships, and logistics through a single platform that scales with their business. The website is no longer a separate entity, it's an extension of how they do business every day. The partnership with Inventis started in 2014 and continues today. That probably says it all.
At Licata Vini, we recognised the commercial potential of the internet as far back as the early 2000s, and we started out managing a static website ourselves. That quickly evolved into one of the first online wine webshops in Belgium, packed with information about Italian wines and innovative ways to serve our customers.
The pace of technological change led us, in 2014, to decide we needed an external partner to help us stay ahead, and we found that partner in Inventis: a team of young wolves, every one of them professional and driven to translate our questions and ideas into user-friendly web applications using the latest technology.
This always happens through a healthy back-and-forth and a project-based approach, one where the focus on the end goals never gets lost, where the Inventis team clearly isn't afraid to share their opinion and advice, and where they respect the structures and integrations with other software that were already in place.
We can now confidently leave the specialised programming work to Inventis and focus more on new ideas, and of course, the wonderful world of Italian wines. Grazie Inventis!
Ready for a webshop that runs in sync with your ERP?
Get in touch with our team. We're happy to think along on how we can tailor your platform just as thoroughly as we did for Licata Vini.