NEWS
ROBERT PARKER WINE ADVOCATE APPOINTED FILIPINO I.T. COMPANY TO BUILD B2B PLATFORM
By Siulan Law Mathews DipWSET
26-7-2022
Credit: Carlos Muza/Unsplash
Renowned wine rating company Robert Parker Wine Advocate (RPWA), owned by the French Michelin Guide Group, has appointed Filipino IT company RBS Software Solutions (RBS) to revamp its e-commerce platform to support business-to-business (B2B) operations to expand from their current business-to-consumer (B2C) model.
According to reports in Filipino media, RPWA’s Chief Information Officer, Carmelo Ubay, signed the contract with RBS President, Lemuel Aceron, earlier this month in Quezon City.
Ubay was reported as saying that the partnership with RBS comes as RPWA starts an aggressive move to revamp and upgrade their e-commerce platform and make a foray to expand from their current business-to-consumer (B2C) model into B2B arrangements to further tap into the burgeoning e-commerce opportunities in the global premium wine markets.
“We are confident that RBS’s expertise can help us in our move to revamp and improve our e-commerce platform and its backend systems,” Ubay said.
“We are honored to be chosen by RPWA as their IT partner. We pledge our commitment to do our utmost best,” Filipino media reported RBS's Aceron as saying.
RPWA has offices in Singapore, as well as in Napa and Monkton in the USA. The RobertParker.com website includes online archives of every issue of The Wine Advocate magazine dating back to 1992, consisting of more than 300,000 original tasting notes.
RPWA’s founder, influential American wine critic Robert Parker, sold the company to a Singapore investor in 2012. It was again sold to the French Michelin Guide Group in 2019.
Michelin’s takeover came six months after Robert Parker announced that he had retired from reviewing wines altogether for RPWA.
Nicolas Achard, CEO of RPWA, said at the time of the takeover: “People curious about wine and gastronomy will be offered a unique set of experiences thanks to the internationally-recognised know-how and independent, unbiased selections of both companies.”
Achard also said then that RPWA will create more wine and food-based digital content and services, but there was no mentioning of expanding into B2B business.
(the writer can be contacted at: info@thewinechronicle.com)
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