Frequently Asked Questions

1. Why is the ISWN an important value creating system for the future of the wine industry?

2. What is the role of wine producers in the ISWN Programme?
3. Is there a role for wine shops and retail chains to play or is this purely a matter for the wine producers?
4. I am a wine producer or wine retailer: what can I do to support and/or join the ISWN programme?

5A. What is the reason there seem to be so many errors in the ISWN codes? Is it not a waterproof system?
5B.    related: What is the timeline of the ISWN programme?
5C.    related: What is the meaning of TT and TB that appear in ISWN codes?

6. How does the ISWN database manage information from different sources?
7. How do the ISWN database and Search handle languages and special characters?

8. How does ISWN relate to the WIDW and Woochi?
9. What is the relation between the ISWN organization and company S4?
10. What software is used by the ISWN system, what are 'ISWN Manager' and WIS'?

11. I am a wine lover and like the ISWN: what's in it for me?
12. I am a wine author, IT or marketing professional and want to work with the ISWN system: how do I start?



1. Why is the ISWN an important value creating system for the future of the wine industry? (top)

The ISWN system implements two key marketing concepts of brand management and category management, and brings these to the wine and retail industry.

In mature industries, large producers (e.g. Procter & Gamble, General Motors, ..) operate a multi-brand product portfolio which connects through category and brand management of the large retailers to drive sales and marketing.

The value of the ISWN-W code is that it is the equivalent of brands as in mature industries such as consumer goods and automotive.

The Wine Style Framework is really a key building block for category management. By offering open definitions valid and applicable for the whole industry, wine producers and retailers in all countries are offered a standard framework and lingua franca to optimize their business.

2. What is the role of Wine Producers in the ISWN Programme? (top)

It is of critical importance that Wine Producers are fully involved as they are the ultimate beneficiary of the ISWN programme which was developed directly for them.

Background: the industry problem with wine information
To understand why, look at the problem of giving the markets worldwide quality wine information. With markets we mean millions of consumers (wine lovers, wine shops, wine writers, industry people) and ten thousands of websites (just think about the many thousands wine shop websites with information about wines). In the past and today this was mainly done through tradional publishing of books (wine guides, directory, encyclopedia).
Thanks to the unique capabilities of internet this is changing as each company can publish their own data directly: overall this makes for more complete and more up-to-date information. The problem is the coordination of data in terms of consistency, structure and search through it.

Talking about up-to-date and complete wine information means managing consistency of a huge amount of structured data. First, consider between 10 to 100 characteristics or attributes for over 100.000 items (wine producers and wines, i.e. ISWN-P and W codes). As a whole this makes approximately 1 Million data fields. Secondly, consider about 10 attributes at the vintage and bottle level (ISWN-V and B) where one has the label, price, rating, tasting note, bottle volume, quantity produced etc ..

This makes another 10 x 100.000 items every year as this changes per vintage for every wine. Overall the scope of the ISWN database is to provide a system to maintain several million values of reference information (not considering translation of information from and into different languages in the above).

=> Hence, the obvious place to start is to focus work on the reference ISWN-P and ISWN-W codes (only).

Rationale to solving the problem globally
Technically and theoretically, to work 100.000 items at one minute/item takes approximately one man-year, but more realistic is to take five minutes per item as this requires research and validation. This means about five man-years – if (and a big if actually) – it can be done at all, as the info may just not be available. Unfortunately, once done, it is likely that so much additional data has come in from different sources that one can start all over again.

This is the rationale in a nutshell.
The conclusion is that the only feasible approach is to have a system that distributes the work and provides an incentive for each logical 'owner' to maintain 'their' information. This explains the approach and system implementation chosen by ISWN: by asking the producer to maintain and publish their information, each wine producer is enabled to put all the information about his wines publicly on the internet. No more need to pay fees to be in this guide, and that guide .. the producer now has control over the information. Entering it once in the ISWN Manager, all possibilities are there: the info can be used to dynamically update company website, the data can be published to different sources, and everyone who's interested can use the ISWN and Woochi search engines to get what they need.

Bottom line: the ISWN Manager offers retailers the benefits of working with a shared unique product code, and connects them directly with their customers: both retailers (see below) and consumers. The ISWN Manager software has additional options to allow direct communication and transactions between wine producer and wine retailer, see www.iswn.net for more info.

3. Is there a role for wine shops and retail chains to play or is this purely a matter for the wine producers? (top)

Besides the stream for Producers, the second major stream in the ISWN programme is to engage the cooperation of retailers: wine shops and retail chains. We can offer retailers a special version of the ISWN Manager that allows them to manage company details and wine catalogs, and publish all details in the ISWN and WIDW databases. To help wine shops to get started, a service exists to 'ISWN-ize' catalogs and price lists from wine shops with ten or hundred thousands of records using batch programs. This offers retailers the benefits of working with a shared unique product code, and connects them directly with their suppliers (wine producers). The ISWN Manager software has additional options to allow direct communication and transactions between wine retailer and wine producer. One of the benefits is that the programme receives large quantities of data with wine producer and wine names to map to ISWN-P/W/V, with additional information such as wine prices in different countries. A service exists to 'ISWN-ize' catalogs and price lists from wine shops with ten or hundred thousands of records. This enriches the database, but again the trade off is that additional 'dirty' data makes its way into the database .. producing TB codes. We have ISWN-ized publicly available datafiles from renowed sources – and the number and type of errors is just unbelievable.
First focus was on developing the technological components, building reference data and testing.

4. I am a wine producer or wine retailer: what can I do to support and/or join the ISWN programme? (top)
Please check out www.iswn.net, you will find a website dedicated to your business context. This website also offers access to the ISWN Manager, both the White Pages as the powerfull Yellow Pages formula

5A. What is the reason there seem to be so many errors in the ISWN codes? Is it not a waterproof system? (top)

The ISWN system is probably the most rigorous design and implementation of any unique product code system.

Please read sections 5B and 5C that explain why errors are a 'normal' but temporary thing, as the ISWN system has been developed to be continuously extended and improved with on-line real-time additions over internet throughout the years. The most important thing to remember is that this does NOT affect the benefits of the ISWN system. This is the beauty of the implementation: - it starts off by offering benefits from day one, as proven today
- it allows producers to join in and be enabled at any point in time, in phases,
- thanks to the update processes, the system is only getting better with the time .. all the time, we
are only moving forward and never going back as the world of wine gets 'ISWN-ized'.

Exactly how this works is explained in sections 5B and 5C below.


5B. What is the timeline of the ISWN programme? (top)

The programme for the implementation of the code consists of three main phases:
1 - develop the foundation: the code, systems, and a limited set of clean, reliable high quality reference data
2 - focus on completeness: grow the database to get full coverage and get as many, preferably all wines in the world
3 - go to market: develop relationships and involvement of producers and retailers to grow the continuous process of updates to correct and improve the data

The programme is well underway with phase 2 but only in the pre-stage of phase 3.

The data for the first phase in 1999-2000 was based on official publications of wineries and wines.
The second phase 2001-2003 used batch indexing tools to 'ISWN-ize' index existing information of wine producers and wines and connect it to an integrating ISWN code. Examples are datafiles with UPC and EAN codes.
The software for the third phase was developed in 2001-2002 and consists of on-line self servicing tools to allow wine producers to manage their own data.

It was a conscious choice to accept errors in ISWN codes with phase 2 in order to get coverage: a reference database needs to contain every wine and producer.

The implication of accepting 'dirty' data from many different sources is pollution in the ISWN codes as all existing errors were inherited in the so-called TB codes. However, as explained above, the ISWN system is designed to improve the data iteratively and continuously so the process converges to reasonably up-to-date and complete data.

5C.What is the meaning of TT and TB that appear in ISWN codes? (top)

Meaning
The two characters for wine region (see also Format) are used to flag data input by other sources and distinguish from data which has been validated by the ISWN organization. Whenever the RR digits are not a numerical code but alphanumerical characters such as "TT" or "TB", this means the data originates from an unofficial third party source which may include retailers and consumers.
Origin
Indeed, the design of the ISWN system included the implementation requirement that internet technology would be used for establishing a complete global reference index of wine producers and wines in the most effective way possible.
Therefore, multiple information suppliers and sources have been consulted to populate the ISWN database in the period from 1999 to today.
However, all such third-party data may contain errors which can only be corrected when a wine producer supplies the official and correct information directly to the system (see Registration info).
Management of temporary codes
In terms of data cleanup, TT and TB wines have to be merged with others, renamed, or taken out of use (in which case they become XX). This is a relatively simple process and the advantage for the ISWN programme is that we do not loose any information. Two wines (e.g. "Baron Brane" and "Le Baron de Brane") can be merged and prices, ratings, labels, .. are retained in the process as the two ‘old codes’ get mapped to the single new code. The programme has developed sophisticated technology to publish changes in the ISWN reference database to all other 'client ISWN subscriber' systems that use the ISWN code and information. This offers all clients the advantage of remaining up to date without having to bother about this master reference data.
Practically
The three entry points into the ISWN code management system are:
1/ free addition by client ISWN subscriber systems (e.g. White Pages on www.iswn.net, or consumer sites such as www.warpa.com
2/ ISWN Code Correction page on this website that allows anyone to report issues, errors, corrections
3/ The ISWN Manager software for Wine Producers: this allows wine producers to have the final word. By defining their wines in the ISWN Manager, they automatically clean up all 'their' ISWN codes and impose these to the whole world and all systems that use ISWN


6. How does the ISWN database manage information coming from different sources? (top)

The ISWN database manages information about wine producers and wines per unique ISWN code, and stores an individual timestamped record for each different source of information. This means each Original Information Supplier manages his/her own data, and nobody overwrites any data of someone else.

7. How does the ISWN database and search handle languages and special characters? (top)

The ISWN software (database and search engines) are fully equipped to handle multiple languages. Today the web screens are only in English, but a full multi-lingual version is already available (but currently only for internal use). In order to avoid typos and have an effective search, the names of wine regions, wine producer, wines and grapes is stored in a simple way without accents (e.g. French) or other language specific characters (e.g. German, Spanish). The full and correct names including all accents and other language specific characters can be input by wine producers in their self-servicing environment. This is called the ISWN Manager, more info can be found on www.iswn.net.

8. How does ISWN relate to the WIDW and Woochi? (top)

WIDW stands for Wine Information Data Warehouse. It uses key master data from the ISWN reference database.
Woochi is the name of a website and search engine that sits on top of the WIDW.

9. What is the relation between the ISWN organization and company S4 (top)?
The ISWN organization is a non-profit organization sponsored by the wine and retail industry, with a mission to develop, implement, roll-out and support the ISWN system to the benefit of both industry users and consumers.

S4 BVBA is an IT and marketing solutions company based in Brussels, Belgium. It develops business solutions and offers IT and marketing services. Starting from its conception in 1999, S4 has developed the software for the ISWN organization.

10. What software is used by the ISWN system, what are 'ISWN Manager' and WIS'? (top)

The information in the ISWN database is managed using a software called WIS, for Wine Information System.
This software has different modules, such as WIS-P (Producer module), WIS-R (Retailer module), etc ..
The ISWN Manager is the name for the access software that allows Producers and Retailers to manage their own information in the ISWN database. The ISWN Manager consists of a tailored version of the WIS-P and WIS-R software.


11. I am a wine lover and like the ISWN: what's in it for me? (top)

Now you will finally be able to find back a wine with the information from the wine label.
Thanks to the ISWN database and search engine technology, you are pointed directly to the producer and wine.
You only get advantages:
- you get a direct link to the producer website
- all kinds of interesting information is connected to the ISWN codes, such as ratings and tasting notes, but also prices
- price comparisons: as the ISWN code allows to integrate information from different sources, you are sure to compare the right prices from the same wine and vintage


12. I am a wine author, IT or marketing professional and want to work with the ISWN system: how do I start? (top)

Contact info@iswn.org and you will receive advice and support to take advantage of what ISWN has to offer, specifically for your needs. For example, we can assist you in 'ISWN-izing' existing data so your existing investment becomes ISWN-compatible.