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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ries for the care and well-being of all ged, nicely illustrated and up-to-date, it often no longer current by the time the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
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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
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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|
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
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