13 times faster and 16 times more often updated documents for all pet animals

Page created by Randall Hansen
 
CONTINUE READING
13 times faster and 16 times more often updated documents for all pet animals
Case Study                                             For the Love of Pets - in a Printed Format

     13 times faster and 16 times more often
     updated documents for all pet animals
     „Vitakraft. For the love of pets.“ is the guiding principle behind the Corporate Philosophy and Policy of one the most success-
     ful enterprises in the pet care business. Originally a small trading company for animal feed located near Bremen, the com-
     pany has since developed into the worldwide market leader for household pet products and has 20 sales and distribution
     companies in Europe, Asia and America.

     Developing and manufacturing high-
     quality products for species-specific
     nutritional needs and the care and
     welfare of pets is the highest priority
     at Vitakraft. Taking the latest scienti-
     fic research findings into account, the
     animal foodstuff specialist produces
     innovative products and assortment
     of goods tailored to meet the specific
     needs of household pets. The products
     are manufactured in numerous produc-
     tion plants both at home and abroad.

     Today, more than 2,000 Vitakraft pro-
     ducts ensure –optimum nutrition for
     birds, dogs, cats and small animals
     such as rabbits, mice, guinea pigs
     and gerbils. Their wide product range
     comprises both pet foods, supple-
     ments and treats, as well as accesso-
     ries for the care and well-being of all    ged, nicely illustrated and up-to-date, it   often no longer current by the time the
     household pets. And the product range      particularly serves the sales force/field    catalogue could finally go to press.
     is continuously being adapted to meet      staff when calling on customers – pri-       Following the next price adjustment,
     needs: No matter whether accessories       marily retail chain stores and pet stores    the prices were often no longer up-to-
     and toys for dogs and cats, or new, im-    – as an important means of being able        date. Optimizing the process became
     proved foodstuff formulations for birds    to present and visualize new products.       inevitable to keep up with the growing
     and small animals – by continuously                                                     demands.
     further developing their product range,    Up until a short time ago, the central
     the company ensures that they will still   Marketing Department at the Bremen           We therefore first tackled establishing
     maintain their leading market position     headquarters was always busy when it         the basis for improved and central data
     in diverse product segments in the fu-     came to updating their product catalo-       management of all product-related in-
     ture.                                      gue at least every two years; in time for    formation. In 2012, with the implemen-
                                                the most important international trade       tation of the PIM system from Informa-
     Having current catalogues materials        fair „Interzoo“. The process was carried     tica, the foundation was laid and the
     when calling on customers, boosts tur-     out almost completely by hand, and           existing rudimentary data structure in
     nover. Viewed from this aspect, at Vita-   was correspondingly resource-inten-          Excel was considerably optimized. This
     kraft, the product catalogue is of cen-    sive and error-prone. Creation time per      was the prerequisite for the next opti-
     tral importance and an accompanying        catalogue generally took six months.         mization phase – extensive process
     element during sales talks. Well-arran-    Product images and descriptions were         automation in the printing process. To

                                                                                                                                 1|
13 times faster and 16 times more often updated documents for all pet animals
Case Study                                               For the Love of Pets - in a Printed Format

     begin with, based on the existing pro-      However, this non-recurring time and           took a time expenditure of six months,
     duct catalogue, the German catalogue        effort was worth it: The greater part of       for the first time ever, a catalogue was
     was to be automated by approx. 80%          the contents for the product catalogue,        finished within only 14 days. Whereby,
     and created at the push of a button.        for example, the structure, category           the greatest amount of time was spent
                                                 texts, etc. could initially be directly con-   by the Marketing Department where the
     During the objective-based evaluati-        figured in PIM. Moreover, a particular         contents were checked. This is equiva-
     on of providers to be considered, In-       highlight was that it was now possible         lent to a generation period that is 13
     Between stood out because of their          to immediately display the GTIN Iden-          times faster. As a result, Vitakraft can
     diversified customer references and a       tification Number as a barcode for             now publish a current catalogue every
                                                                                                three months, and thus respond much
                                                                                                more quickly and flexibly to changes in
                                                                                                the product range, without needing any
                                                                                                further resources.

                                                                                                As an internationally operating compa-
                                                                                                ny, Vitakraft is naturally thinking ahead:
                                                                                                Following the positive experience with
                                                                                                the first language version, product ca-
                                                                                                talogues will soon be produced for fur-
                                                                                                ther sales companies in Switzerland,
                                                                                                the Netherlands, Italy and France. They
                                                                                                will published in French, Dutch, Italian
                                                                                                and English, and in the same efficient
                                                                                                and automated manner. The faster the
                                                                                                field staff has catalogues at hand, the
                                                                                                faster new products can be success-
                                                                                                fully placed on all markets, which provi-
                                                                                                des for increased turnover and a higher
                                                                                                market share.

     license version specially tailored to the   the Shipping Department without any
     requirements. As a reputable and reli-      further data acquisition. Another posi-
     able publishing expert, InBetween pro-      tive effect is that Vitakraft can quickly
     vided Vitakraft with the guarantee of       react to change requests at short no-
     quickly reducing project costs.             tice – a new catalogue with a revised
                                                 product range structure can be digitally
     To build the basis for automatically cre-   exported – for this purpose, the data
     ating the Vitakraft product catalogue,      structure is only continuously updated
     an interface between the data in Infor-     in the source system, PIM. Creating the
     matica PIM and designing the catalo-        catalogue is now a highly automated
     gue in InDesign also had to be imple-       process, and only the cover and rear
     mented. This, however, was relatively       pages are manually added InDesign.
     easy: via an XML export in the format
     of the given publication and language,      With the first German catalogue printed
     it was possible to generate the desired     at the push of a button, Vitakraft laid a
     publication at the press of a button. In    milestone in regard to efficiently crea-
     the end, only the catalogue content and     ting print materials. In place of the ori-
     page layouts had to be updated and ad-      ginal process of manually publishing a
     apted.                                      new catalogue every two years, which

                                                                                                                                       2|
13 times faster and 16 times more often updated documents for all pet animals
Case Study                                                For the Love of Pets - in a Printed Format

     Interview                                      Our job in Marketing is to provide
                                                    all the needed and applied media in
     As a manufacturer and trade company            equal measure.
     with a large number of customers, is it
     very important to Vitakraft that the spe-      Which catalogue contents are changed
     cialist shops invariably have the latest       most often?                                   Heiko
     products on stock. Even though elec-                                                         Cichala
     tronic information plays an increasingly       We normally have a range of new pro-
     greater role, it is primarily the job of the   ducts twice a year. Last year, many
     qualified field staff/sales force to call      changes were additionally necessary
     customers‘ attention to newly develo-          when we changed the design of our             Heiko   Cichala , dal 1999  lavora
                                                                                                   has been   employed   at Vita-
     ped products and to convince them to           umbrella brand. This resulted in our          come   IT-Application Consultant
                                                                                                   kraft as an IT Application  Con- da
     add them to their product range.               having carry out a relaunch for many          Vitakraft.
                                                                                                   sultant since 1999.
                                                    products. Very often, we also have to
     From your point of view, is the traditi-       either adapt the product images, or
                                                                                                  Mr. Cichala is responsible
     onal product catalogue contemporary,           would like to use new, prettier product
                                                                                                  for all innovations and adap-
     or will it perhaps be replaced by Apps         photographs.
                                                                                                  tations relating to Product
     in the medium term?
                                                                                                  Management within the com-
                                                    From a sales perspective, what are the
                                                                                                  pany. Alongside the ongoing
     That quite varied at our place, and            advantages of regularly updating the
                                                                                                  interaction with the Marke-
     depends both on the sales represen-            catalogue?
                                                                                                  ting Department in regard
     tative and the customer. It goes wit-                                                        to adapting and optimizing
     hout saying that our colleagues have           Colorful and appealing product images
                                                                                                  product data, he also has ac-
     also brought along tablets, but there          are of utmost importance when selling,
                                                                                                  cess to central tools such as
     are still many who still rely on cata-         and provide for more turnover. Ever sin-
                                                                                                  SAP Business Workflow and
     logues. Particularly the smaller retai-        ce we are in the position of being able
                                                                                                  Product Information Manage-
     lers are often not as computer savvy           to create our catalogues simply at the
                                                                                                  ment system from Informati-
     as our major customers.                        push of a button, we can immediately
                                                                                                  ca.
                                                    take over all new product images. We

                                                                                               could now ever create a new product
                                                                                               range catalogue every month, which
                                                                                               our Sales Department would certainly
                                                                                               welcome.

                                                                                               And what about the cost side?

                                                                                               As we generally relay the catalogue
                                                                                               in electronic form to our customers –
                                                                                               most often in PDF format – print costs
                                                                                               are not an issue for us. All the more
                                                                                               important, though, is the immense in-
                                                                                               crease in efficiency when creating the
                                                                                               catalogues. In comparison, the manual
                                                                                               process was far more time-consuming
                                                                                               and cost-intensive. Not to mention, the
                                                                                               many associated sources of error.

                                                                                                                                     3|
13 times faster and 16 times more often updated documents for all pet animals
Case Study                                                For the Love of Pets - in a Printed Format

     What aspects of the project implemen-
     tation were of particular importance to              Project Highlights
     you?
                                                          •    Shortened production time and considerably reduced project
     We, as a middle-sized enterprise, pre-
                                                               costs thanks to automatization.
     fer orientating ourselves on the market
     with partners and providers at eye le-               •    Important information for shipment can be added without the
     vel. InBetween not only presents stre-                    need to collect additional data.
     amlined and target-oriented project                  •    Even last-minute change requests can easily be adopted in the
     structures in external company repre-                     catalogue.
     sentation, but they live them, too. Direct
                                                          •    Creation times up to 13 times faster.
     contact to one or two project managers
     quickly leads to results.                            •    All country and language versions can accomplished with the
                                                               same process.

                                                          •    High degree of automatization of over 80 %.

     Vitakraft pet care GmbH & Co. KG

     Vitakraft-Werke Wührmann & Sohn GmbH          1,600 employees worldwide make sure that
     & Co. KG, based in Bremen, is one of the      roughly 1.2 million high-quality Vitakraft
     worldwide leading brand-name enterprises      products for nourishing pets are produced
     in the household pets industry. Since 2013,   and distributed on a daily basis. More than
                                                                                                 being able to obtain the best for their pets,
     Vitakraft belongs to the Deuerer group of     5,000 trade partners in more than 50,000
                                                                                                 anywhere and at any time – providing for a
     companies and apart from Germany, they        companies the world over, have a wide
                                                                                                 healthy and long life of their dear pets.
     are represented in 19 further countries in    range of Vitakraft products on stock. Mil-
     Europe, Asia and America. Approximately       lions of household pet owners can rely on

     InBetween Deutschland GmbH                    myview systems GmbH
     Friedrichstraße 39                            Lindberghring 1
     D-70174 Stuttgart                             D-33142 Büren

         +49 711 72 23 32-0                             +49 2955 74 33-00
         +49 711 72 23 32-29                            +49 2955 74 33-99
         info@inbetween.de                              info@myview.de
         www.inbetween.com                              www.myview.de

                                                                                                                                          4|
You can also read