You are taking over an estate
Set initial priorities and support continuity of work during a change of leadership.
Estate management
Connect people, priorities and decisions.
Your estate follows the rhythm of seasons, teams and markets. We help organise its management and maintain a complete view without losing touch with everyday operations.
Your situation
Start with the reality of your project.
Decisions across the vineyard, cellar, administration and sales are closely connected. A technical priority may change cash requirements; a commercial opportunity may affect production planning. Our role is to make those connections clearer and help coordinate action. We start with the tools you already use, the resources available and the way the team works. Together, we define useful support, whether for a specific assignment or on an ongoing basis.
Your organisation is changing
Clarify responsibilities and improve coordination between vineyard, cellar and commercial teams.
You need a clearer view
Connect available information to monitor activity and prepare operational decisions.
The scope
What we work on together.
Coordinate everyday operations
Clarify who decides, who contributes and when. Connect production constraints with management priorities and organise useful exchanges across the different activities.
Inform decisions
Review management information, costs and operational needs. Choose measures that support decisions in your business rather than adding indicators without a purpose.
Support the team
Help organise tasks and changes in working practices. Bring in administrative support, training or specialist expertise where a specific need has been identified.
Organise responsibilities
Each activity keeps its role. Decisions are coordinated.
Managing an estate does not mean centralising every task. It means knowing who prepares information, who decides and who carries out the action. We help clarify these roles with the people already involved, taking account of team size and existing working arrangements.
In the vineyard
The person responsible for field operations reports progress, labour constraints and equipment needs. Technical priorities remain connected to conditions on the ground. Coordination makes scheduling decisions and resource requirements visible, without replacing technical expertise with a simple task list.
In the cellar
Monitoring connects planned operations, volumes, equipment availability and preparation or bottling requirements. A commercial request should be checked against a realistic stock position and timetable. Relevant quality and traceability information reaches the people who need it.
In administration
Deadlines, invoices, management information and required documents are tracked with identified owners. Management support does not replace the professionals responsible for accounting or regulatory obligations. It helps organise information flows and identify points requiring a decision.
In sales
Orders, expected deliveries and customer feedback inform cellar and leadership requirements. An opportunity must be distinguished from a confirmed order. Exchanges help anticipate requests and constraints instead of discovering them when a shipment is being prepared.
Three review rhythms, adapted to the estate.
The following rhythms are examples, not a prescribed calendar. A small estate may bring several roles together in one discussion. Harvest or a busy sales period may call for a different schedule.
A weekly operational discussion
Share upcoming work, immediate constraints and decisions needed. A useful outcome is an understood priority, an owner and a review date. Matters requiring detailed analysis are separated from everyday adjustments.
A monthly management review
Bring together completed activity, sales, stocks and available expenditure information. Explain differences from assumptions rather than simply commenting on a total. Decide which actions to continue, adjust or revisit, while noting information that remains incomplete.
Seasonal checkpoints
Before an important stage, examine resource requirements and dependencies between teams. Afterwards, review observations to prepare for the next cycle. Lessons are useful when facts, decisions and particular circumstances are retained together.
A useful dashboard
A few indicators, with shared definitions.
A number becomes useful when its unit, source and date are known. The following is a basis for discussion: selection depends on your management questions and data quality. No universal target value is attached to these examples.
Swipe the table horizontally to see all columns.
| Indicator | Unit / scope | Possible source | Indicative frequency |
|---|---|---|---|
| Work completed | Hours by operation and activity | Time records | Weekly |
| Available stock | hL or bottles by lot, excluding reserved volumes under the agreed definition | Reconciled stock records | Weekly or monthly |
| Orders to prepare | Bottles and requested dates | Confirmed orders | Weekly |
| Invoiced sales | Euros excluding VAT and volumes, by channel | Invoicing records | Monthly |
| Expenditure by activity | Euros, with a consistent scope | Accounts and management allocations | Monthly, subject to availability |
| Open actions | Number, owner and review date | Shared action plan | At each review |
A hectolitre, written hL, equals one hundred litres. Bottle volumes can only be compared with bulk volumes after conversion for the container size. Similarly, orders, invoices and receipts represent different stages: combining them obscures commercial and cash-flow information.
Understand costs by activity.
An activity is a separately monitored set of operations, such as vineyard work, winemaking or bottling. Comparison starts with a common definition of included costs and the period observed. Directly attributable expenses are distinguished from shared costs, allocated using an explicit rule.
A cost per hectare and a cost per hectolitre answer different questions. Volumes, subcontracting, working time and the treatment of equipment can affect interpretation. Before comparing two years or two estates, we examine these differences; a variance alone is not evidence of inefficiency.
Turn a priority into a tracked action
- Describe the specific problem and the information that supports it.
- Name the owner and the people whose contribution is required.
- Define the next action, resources and dependencies.
- Set a review date and the evidence that will show progress.
- Record the decision to continue, adjust or close the action.
Depending on the assignment, this can use existing tools or a simple shared record. The purpose is for the team to use it, rather than add data entry that has no effect on decisions.
Fictional example · illustrating the approach
An urgent delivery reveals a coordination need.
An order arrives when the cellar has scheduled another operation. The first task is to check the actual delivery expectation, ready stock and available resources. The team then agrees a decision and an owner to inform the customer. At the next review, they consider how confirmed orders could be shared earlier. This invented example illustrates coordination; it describes neither a client nor an achieved saving.
Do we need new software to improve management?
Not necessarily. We start with existing tools and information. A digital change should address an identified need, clear uses and the team’s capacity to make it work.
Who retains leadership decisions?
Each role is agreed within the assignment. Management support prepares and coordinates decisions; it does not implicitly transfer the business leader’s responsibilities.
Can we start with one issue?
Yes. One activity, a coordination problem or a few indicators can provide an initial scope before deciding whether broader support is useful.
Our approach
Three steps, shaped around your project.
Understand & define
Discuss current operations, constraints and expectations with the team.
Build the plan
Agree priorities, responsibilities and a review rhythm suited to the estate.
Act & review
Support implementation and adjust the organisation as needs develop.
Complementary expertise
A team suited to your project.
Pierre Servant contributes estate management experience. Mélanie Loustalet and Loïc Galy bring cellar expertise, while Antonio Botica Gomes focuses on vineyard operations. The collective connects these skills with commercial and leadership questions. Where relevant, Implia can add a perspective on useful applications of artificial intelligence for the business. Each contribution is scoped around the needs of the project.
Let’s talk
Where are you with your project?
Tell us about your situation, what you wish to change and the decisions ahead. An initial discussion helps clarify the next steps.