Accelerating brand performance
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SGK: optimising brand performance through digital transformation
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WRIT TEN BY
CATHERINE S TURM AN PRODUCED BY
CR AIG DANIEL S
w w w.sgk i n c. com
The need for omnichannel solutions is providing ample opportunity for the marketing supply chain industry. Chief Technology Officer at SGK, Francois Estellon, tells us more‌
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upporting clients in optimizing their brand performance through customized content and packaging solutions,
SGK has successfully blended the right 04
combination of talent, services and technology in the management of infinite content requirements across ever-growing brand touchpoints. Knowing that even the best ideas are only as good as their execution, the business has applied this knowledge across the entire brand ecosystem, spanning multiple channels, contents and geographies. Transforming the way brands relate to their customers, SGK rethinks how brands are created and sold, and how their assets are produced to protect their equities to ensure a fully optimized investment. Spearheading a multitude of technology-led initiatives, and benefitting from an extensive career across manufacturing and supply chain product development, SGK’s Chief Technology
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w w w.sgk i n c. com
“The AWS platform enables the flexibility and speed IT needs to transform Matthews International, with the technology leadership for us to innovate for the future of our business� Davor Brkovich Head of IT and CIO Matthews International
www.BuildOn.aws
“ WE ARE THE IT PEOPLE WITH LABELS & PACKAGING KNOWLEDGE AND THE LABELS & PACKAGING PEOPLE WITH IT COMPETENCE”
Modular production workflow suite for … • File processing • Asset management • Soft proofing • Workflow automation
• The Standard in PDF Editing • Designed for Labels & Packaging
Design: www.gd90.de
• OS X and Windows
www.hybridsoftware.com
CLICK TO WATCH : ‘SGK CONTENT SOLUTIONS’ 09 Officer (CTO) Francois Estellon jumped
our organization can help them and
at the chance to take on a new challenge
how it should drive our technology
in a sector which he had yet to explore.
focus. Our customers have real
“SGK was a new industry to me. I love
challenges that need solving urgently
to try to draw differences and parallels
and we need to focus on this as
between various industries. A third-par-
a tech-driven organization. In the
ty view on operations and the way we
marketing supply chain industry,
do business can bring different
we are one of the most established
perspectives. You have to maintain a
businesses and collaborate with great
balance between learning something
global brands. Mars, Coca-Cola,
new while trying to inject some knowl-
Pepsi, Procter and Gamble, Unilever,
edge from your previous life,” he explains.
Apple… you name a global consumer
“I like to spend time with our clients
product or food company, and we
and our talented client-facing team
probably do business with them.
to understand their challenges, how
It’s a pretty interesting space,” he adds. w w w.sgk i n c. com
INNOVATIVE SOLUTIONS
marketplace, SGK’s long-term
Through an effective blend of creative,
technology roadmap has focused on
technical and business-orientated
simplifying, standardizing and automat-
individuals, SGK has built a collaborative
ing services, applying a manufacturing
culture which places technology firmly
approach to the creation of marketing
at the center. Developing products,
deliverables. “This removes unneces-
such as packaging and ads, as well as
sary hidden-factory costs by creating
PDF files, renders, metadata and more,
and managing content seamlessly
the company’s creative brands such as
across systems and marketing
Brandimage and Anthem support the
channels while offering greater agility
establishment of brand identities and
in the creative development process,”
effective marketing communications
affirms Estellon.
and programs that enable its clients 10
“The guiding principle of our road-
to strengthen their overall positions
map is to embrace leading-edge
in their chosen market.
concepts without carrying legacy debt
“Our Equator brand focuses on the unique needs of retailers, while IDL creates exciting and interactive instore displays and immersive brand experiences. Our production brands also bring strategies and ideas to life. Schawk produces brand assets and protects brands, ensuring flawless execution and consistency, while Saueressig delivers rotogravure solutions and technical expertise in the reproduction of brand assets,” says Estellon. As brand owners continue to experience complex demands stemming from a rapidly evolving
to what has come before. This is on top of generating revenue from new digital products and services, reaching new markets and opportunities to supply different customer outcomes though technology. We also want to improve our speed to market, and enhance quality through automation. Production is a big part of our DNA and we need to continue improving.” Partnering with a number of companies which share SGK’s guiding principle for technology, the business has become cloud-first (utilizing Platformas-a-Service (PaaS) for running existing applications, managing artwork and content file storage and shares), alongside an API-first, User Experience and User Interface Design (UI/UX). The adoption of artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning (ML) and national language processing (NLP) will also be additional accelerators for SGK’s production teams.
RETAIL EDGE Consumer Packaged Goods (CPG) in particular may face significant disruption in the coming years, and with the race to provide consumers choice through omnichannel sales w w w.sgk i n c. com
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options, brand products will need to be available not just through traditional packaging, but through a multitude of e-commerce channels. The marketing supply chain will therefore need to become nimbler in providing marketing assets. This, coupled with store brand competition and changing consumer tastes and behaviors will provide brands with increased opportunities to utilize innovative, connected packaging solutions, and differentiate themselves with the types of experience and information offered. 12
“The time to produce assets has also been impacted, not only as a result of technology, but shifting market expectations,” says Estellon. “For example, we’ve been able to build a supply chain for easy access production. Historically, if you see a picture of a liquor in a magazine, this seems to be a photography asset. We would book a photographer, a studio, and take a picture of the assets. These are renders now. We take models to bottles, take the models to liquid, we take the packaging we develop, and we build a render for all the liquor brands in the world. We are able to build a supply chain in weeks. Eight or nine projects, that’s
E XE CU T I VE PRO FI LE
Francois Estellon As Chief Technology Officer for SGK, the brand solutions division of Matthews International Corporation. Francois Estellon is responsible for defining the vision of the role that technology plays in the development of our products and services, for enhancing the delivery of our current and future products and services with software solutions, and for leveraging the data in our business to create more value for our clients. Estellon sits on the Advisory Board for the special interest group on digital transformation at Penn State called CODE (Consortium for the Digital Enterprise), a research and advisory group focusing on Digital Trends within Enterprise Computing. He is also a Board Member for the Pittsburgh Technology Council. Estellon was twice named a Pittsburgh CIO of the Year award finalist and a Top 100 Technology Leader by Computer World in 2016. Prior to joining SGK, Francois Estellon worked for PwC Germany as a Senior Consultant for a large company’s global ERP implementation. Eventually, he started his own consulting firm which quickly grew into a multi-million dollar operation across Germany, France, Canada and the U.S. The company was sold in 2006 and Francois took a leadership role in the newly formed global consulting footprint. In 2008, Estellon joined Caterpillar Global Mining, a division of Caterpillar, Inc. as Director for Global Application, and soon became Global CIO for the $5 billion company. Moving forward in 2013, Estellon joined Gardner Denver, a $2.5 billion private equity-owned engineering conglomerate. As CIO for the company, he was responsible for the global IT footprint. Gardner Denver successfully completed an IPO in early 2017. Estellon studied industrial engineering at the Grenoble Institute of Technology in France and received a master’s in supply chain and manufacturing management from Linkoping University in Sweden. Francois Estellon is a sought-after thought leader and speaker by the technology industry and regularly publishes on the topic of leadership in technology at: www.cio.com
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huge from photographic assets to free assets. Now it takes weeks instead of years, so that’s important for us.” With growing demand for increased information to be placed on packaging, SGK is driven equally by creative content and data. Estellon explains that creating a new package requires a significant amount of metadata: from nutrition, ingredients, barcode and QR codes, all the way through to brand and allergy statements, and often in a multi-language environment. “Using technology to recognize, capture and 14
enhance data sets is therefore critical for us and for our clients. As an industry leader we are also working to establish standards in taxonomy and metadata definitions for the verticals we serve.” The way in which consumers interact with brands has clearly led SGK to
transform its service offerings. Restructuring teams to remove all internal silos between development and deployment has seen the establishment of integrated, holistic solutions, where teams can gain greater understanding of the brand ecosystem outside their particular area of expertise, become more flexible to clients’ needs and identify optimisation opportunities to develop innovations which address marketplace demands. By improving brand and business performance in relation to cost, speed and market share, these tools have all proven invaluable to SGK’s clients.
FOUR PILLARS All industries are being driven towards more digital engagement, leading SGK to provide a user centered experience which remains contextual for a client’s business. Building four platforms which provide strong foundations for its end-to-end supply chain operations, the company has developed a new Service Delivery Platform, HubX. This platform is not only scalable, but fully covers the end-to-end supply chain and delivers a complete, user-centric client experience. w w w.sgk i n c. com
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“HubX will put users in control of their content workflow, simplifying tasks through automation, connecting to back-end systems and enriching project data points, guaranteeing process efficiencies” — Francois Estello, Chief Technology Officer
enrich project data points, driving process efficiencies. It also delivers real time reporting, and showcases project data and spend, revealing quality insights.” “Previously, we didn’t have a global ERP system. We now utilize SAP as our middle office to produce a single view of data. We’ve been transforming our production line, and partnered with Hybrid to revamp our digital production environment,” he adds. “We want to focus on operational improvements that bring customer value: efficiency, quality of artwork and velocity/responsiveness. This extends towards simplifying, streamlining our processes, and empowering employees with digital tools to help deliver better customer outcomes. HubX brings the value of
“HubX is an interface which grants clients greater control, visibility,
that investment directly to our clients.” The transformation of SGK’s digital
efficiency and access to data for
infrastructure has been fully tied
all content projects, from brief to
together through its strong Application
asset release, and will bring a number
Programming Interface (API) system.
of innovations to the fore,” explains
Leveraging readily available micro-
Estellon. “HubX will put you in
services from Amazon Web Services
control of your content workflow by
(AWS), the company has even built a
simplifying tasks through automation,
robotic process automation (RPA) tool
connecting to back-end systems to
called Logic Builder to complement w w w.sgk i n c. com
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“We collaborate with great global brands. Mars, Coca-Cola, Unilever, Apple… you name a global consumer product or food company, and we do business with them” — Francois Estello, Chief Technology Office
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CLICK TO WATCH : ‘SGK HUBX’ 19
HubX’s capabilities. “It’s a little bit like
OPERATIONAL AGILITY
Lego bricks – we have the base bricks
The business is continually looking
and can now build solutions to benefit
at the next trend or technology to
our customers by shuffling these
support its evolution, and is now set
around and building new ways of
to launch a new solution to further
leveraging our investment. It gives us
improve customer connectivity,
the ability to innovate and scale rapidly,”
Estellon refers to it as “a platform
depicts Estellon. “For example, we
that is built on our combined expertise
were able to build a supply chain for
in software development”.
our 3D assets production in a matter
“A lot of people in our marketplace
of weeks by leveraging our customer
have a software solution but it remains
front end, our production workflow
independent from their business,”
and render software, all secured
he explains. “They cannot sell it as
through our API system.”
software. If clients work with us, they w w w.sgk i n c. com
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gain access to the platform. I think it’s
of content consumed, which all filters
really game changing in our industry,
into a company’s brand strength.
where we want to change the way our
To counteract this, SGK has
clients do business with us.”
successfully launched an array of its
However, although sales are a vital
own internal startup brands, enabling
part of overall brand performance,
clients to address specific tools across
accessing metrics such as views,
the supply chain, either independently
clicks and likes all factor into how
or in conjunction with the company’s
consumers now engage with digital
other services. “ColorDrive, for
content. Consequently, brands will
example, helps clients manage their
need to take a closer look at the array
print quality by providing a cloud-based
internally is that they allow us to broaden and deepen our partnership with clients by helping them solve complex issues. From a client perspective, they have access to tools that can ease their management of the supply chain and ensure their brands are more consistent and accurate on the shelf.” Reinforcing smarter content and packaging solutions, and remaining increasingly efficient, connected and global, SGK creates content and packaging ecosystems capable of humming with extraordinary efficiency, as it turns brand activities into connected content experiences which inform, entertain and delight consumers in unexpected ways. solution that allows for easy evaluation
Its ability to scale will allow the
and comparison of printer performance.
business to leverage resources and
It makes complex print analyses more
local talent to deliver better brand
digestible for those who may not have
consistency, operational agility and
highly specialized print expertise,” says
process efficiency, where technology
Estellon. “5Flow is also an independent
will be the key driver in cementing
software company within our holding
SGK’s ongoing position across an
– they develop configurable workflow
evolving competitive landscape.
platforms for clients to manage their artwork supply chain and approval. The key advantage of these tools w w w.sgk i n c. com
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SGK 1685 River Rd, Des Plaines, IL 60018 (SGK HQ) T +847.827.9494 www.sgkinc.com