How Wine.com Improved Its Data Analytics with Sigma

We spoke with Greg Elenbaas, Vice President of Engineering at Wine.com, the nation's largest online wine retailer. Wine.com enhances the customer experience by blending retail and technology to deliver personalized wine recommendations through advanced analytics powered by Sigma.

Life before Sigma

At Wine.com, we faced significant challenges with our previous analytics pipeline. As the nation's largest online wine retailer, we pride ourselves on discovery and personalization for our customers, yet our data system wasn't keeping pace. Our analytics process had long lead times — team members would submit a request, and it would enter a queue with no certainty of when it would be addressed. Competing priorities made this even worse. Whether for merchandisers, finance, or marketing, everyone faced delays in getting crucial data insights. For example, our merchandisers needed to know which products were out of stock but getting high views, and our marketing team wanted real-time campaign performance data. All of this was bottlenecked by a small analytics team, making it hard to make timely, data-driven decisions.

Choosing a BI Solution

When it became clear that our existing setup was holding us back, we knew we needed a better business intelligence (BI) tool. We were already using Tableau, but it had its own problems. It was clunky, with long lead times for producing reports, and only the most experienced users could truly be productive with it. The licensing structure also made it prohibitive to scale. We briefly considered other platforms, like BigQuery, but after hearing negative feedback from industry peers, we decided against it.

We were impressed by how quickly it integrated with Databricks — within 15 minutes, we had access to our data.

Ultimately, Sigma came highly recommended through an internal referral from a trusted acquaintance. Once we saw the demo, we were impressed by how quickly it integrated with Databricks — within 15 minutes, we had access to all of our data in our bronze, silver, and gold schemas. Sigma’s ability to simplify access control through Azure Active Directory was another major selling point. We needed something intuitive for non-data professionals, and Sigma fit the bill perfectly. It wasn’t just a BI tool — it was a tool that empowered our team to become more data-first.

Life with Sigma

Since implementing Sigma, our entire approach to data has transformed. Our company has truly become more data-first. The long queues are gone. Now, anyone with the time and curiosity to dive into our data can get answers quickly without having to rely on the analytics team. This shift has allowed each department — marketing, merchandising, finance — to make faster, more informed decisions.

Marketing led the charge because they had the longest backlog of data requests. Sigma helped them analyze email campaigns, direct mail, and other performance metrics efficiently. Next, we onboarded our merchandising and finance teams. With historical data spanning 25 years, this shift has been monumental in helping us understand customer preferences, shopping habits, and product trends. We’ve freed up our analysts’ time, allowing them to focus on deep-level analysis and strategy rather than simply churning out reports. The results speak for themselves: our team is more strategic, data-driven, and agile.

Sigma wasn’t just a BI tool — it was a tool that empowered our team to become more data-first.

What’s Next with Sigma

Looking forward, our goal is to deepen our use of Sigma and expand its adoption across all departments. We’re continuing to hold office hours and run workshops to help non-data professionals get comfortable using the tool. We also want to ensure that everyone is utilizing Sigma to its fullest potential. The tool has made it possible for us to connect various data sources easily, and we plan to take advantage of that. For instance, we’re working on integrating marketing spend data from platforms like Google Shopping and Facebook, using simple Excel uploads for now but eventually moving to more automated ETL processes.

The results speak for themselves: our team is more strategic, data-driven, and agile.

Our mission at Wine.com is to remain adaptive to changing trends — whether those are demographic shifts or evolving consumer preferences. With Sigma, we can stay nimble, react to market conditions, and make data-driven decisions that ultimately improve both our margins and our customer experience. The journey with Sigma has been rewarding, and we look forward to what’s next.

Read more about using Sigma for retail sales.