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+ Growth
  • Expanded market reach with consistent, accurate product information
  • Improved brand trust through enhanced data reliability across channels
  • Accelerated entry into new regions with adaptable product data templates
  • Strengthened consumer loyalty via enriched, localized product content
+ Effiency
  • Reduced time-to-market with centralized product data management
  • Decreased manual data handling, freeing up internal resources
  • Minimized errors with automated data enrichment processes
  • Simplified cross-department collaboration through a unified platform

"Contentserv’s PIM/DAM solution provides us with the optimal basis to increase customer loyalty via new and improved services. The introduction is a flagship project in terms of digitization because it eliminates many manual processes and media disruptions, resulting in a significant increase in efficiency. Emmi needs this as a cornerstone for further solutions so that we are prepared for the future."

Jürg Hofer
Team Leader Business Enterprise Architect, Emmi

About Emmi

Emmi AG is the largest milk-processing company in Switzerland – with a broad product portfolio that includes various types of cheese, yogurt products, and the company’s most successful branded product: Caffè Latte. In 2020, the company also began offering vegan products and has been expanding the range ever since.

Headquartered in Lucerne, the Group comprises 25 production plants in Switzerland and subsidiaries in 15 countries. For distribution, Emmi works with large retail chains such as the Coop Group, among others, but also has its own food service for major customers. This extensive network enabled the company to generate sales of around 3.7 billion Swiss francs in 2020 with some 8,700 employees, slightly more than half of which was generated abroad.

emmi-customer-milk-bottling-blog
Pain

From master data to market impact

Emmi’s growth from a medium-sized company to a global leader came with a strong focus on master data standardization and harmonization. However, this transformation didn’t extend fully to customer-facing marketing and communication processes, resulting in fragmented workflows and inefficiencies. To address this, Emmi needed to introduce a robust PIM/DAM solution that would create a centralized, easily accessible database to meet customer information needs seamlessly and prepare for continued growth.

While Emmi had established a solid master data foundation, the data wasn’t readily usable for marketing. Product overviews were incomplete, requiring information from multiple systems to be merged before any unified view was possible. Key software, like ERP and recipe management, functioned effectively in isolation but lacked the collaborative workflows that would enable seamless product data sharing. Cumbersome data maintenance and media disruptions in partner and marketing preparations meant higher costs and slower time-to-market.

However, with a fast-moving ready-to-wear market, the colossal manual entry of different product data (6,000 color references per season, assortment tracking, product feature updates in different languages, etc.) became extremely challenging. Furthermore, primarily using spreadsheets for this purpose was very time-consuming and error-prone. These files quickly became archaic in the context of Lacoste’s digital transformation and they would often contain numerous data entry errors, which resulted in a slow time-to-market that was harmful to sales. Another major challenge involved variable data such as collections, which must be renewed every six months and had to take into account the difference between the Northern and Southern hemispheres.

Therefore Lacoste needed to adopt a tool that would streamline the creation and distribution of its product catalogs on both its merchant and marketplace sites. This made it clear that Product Information Management (PIM) was the right solution to quickly enrich databases, accurately aggregate content, and shorten time-to-market, all while increasing agility and flexibility.

Aim

Building a future-ready foundation for growth

  • Expand the single source of truth to unify data while ensuring data sovereignty and compliance
  • Enable a 360° product view with high data quality and AI-enhanced media tagging for quick access
  • Speed up employee onboarding with an intuitive, workflow-driven system
  • Drive efficiency by automating manual processes and removing media disruptions
  • Improve collaboration with subsidiaries via a cloud-based PIM/DAM solution
  • Digitize data sourcing from suppliers and agencies for streamlined input
  • Boost customer loyalty through consistent, high-quality product information
  • Lay the groundwork for future-ready, digitally advanced trade practices

In addition to these initial objectives, there were two other quantified objectives: the implementation of the PIM solution should make it possible to increase the average value of orders and reduce product returns.

Lacoste evaluated five PIM solutions, and at the end of 2016, they selected Contentserv. Contentserv allows data to be quickly onboarded and adjusted via user-friendly, intuitive interfaces, and for information to be distributed across all sales media. A pioneer in the PIM industry and a leader for 20 years with an international customer portfolio, Contentserv has extensive experience in product information management.

Gain

Empowering teams with intuitive and scalable solutions

  • Contentserv delivered an immediate showcase, letting Emmi’s team experience their own data in the PIM/DAM system firsthand
  • Intuitive interface impressed Emmi’s teams, enhancing productivity and user engagement
  • Cloud-based solution enables seamless, global collaboration through a centralized system
  • Scalable, flexible architecture grows with the business without straining IT resources
  • Comprehensive functionality, adaptability, and supportive partnership made Contentserv the ideal choice.

The Contentserv PIM solution provides great flexibility in data generation, with users managing an impressive amount of data (2,400,000 attributes, 24,000 references, and 172,000 ean/UPC barcodes). Export procedures integrated into the solution speed up the automatic creation and editing of catalogs and web pages, allowing Lacoste to export up to 40,000 items daily. Users can then assemble images, technical attributes, and prices by simply dragging and dropping them onto dynamic models subject to pre-established rules.

Other significant advances include the ease of creating new attributes such as information that allows consumers to refine their choices and maximize their shopping experience. This process used to take several months and now takes only 2 or 3 weeks. Furthermore, as fashion is governed by seasons, it is necessary to reconfigure entire offerings every six months. The Contentserv PIM solution allows Lacoste to maintain the attributes (about 300 per product) of the models that remain on sale, and thus, avoids rebuilding the catalog from scratch.

Facts & Figures

Industry: Food industry


Annual turnover: CHF 3.7 billion (2020)


Target market: Worldwide


Type of products: Dairy products

Facts & Figures

Number of products: Approx. 15,000


Channels - Offline: wholesale, supermarkets, industry, food service


Channels - Media: online & print media

Facts & Figures

Contentserv solution used: PIM & DAM


Usage model: SaaS


Implementation partner: SDZeCOM GmbH

Why (How) Emmi uses Contentserv

  • PIM/DAM centralizes product data, giving Emmi a 360° view for accurate, accessible information
  • Cloud-based platform enables seamless collaboration across global teams
  • AI-based tagging ensures efficient, high-quality media management for rapid data access
  • Automated workflows streamline onboarding and eliminate manual processes, boosting efficiency

However, with a fast-moving ready-to-wear market, the colossal manual entry of different product data (6,000 color references per season, assortment tracking, product feature updates in different languages, etc.) became extremely challenging. Furthermore, primarily using spreadsheets for this purpose was very time-consuming and error-prone. These files quickly became archaic in the context of Lacoste’s digital transformation and they would often contain numerous data entry errors, which resulted in a slow time-to-market that was harmful to sales. Another major challenge involved variable data such as collections, which must be renewed every six months and had to take into account the difference between the Northern and Southern hemispheres.

Therefore Lacoste needed to adopt a tool that would streamline the creation and distribution of its product catalogs on both its merchant and marketplace sites. This made it clear that Product Information Management (PIM) was the right solution to quickly enrich databases, accurately aggregate content, and shorten time-to-market, all while increasing agility and flexibility.

Ready? Here you grow.

Get in touch with one of our Contentserv experts to discover the Product Experience Cloud.