Keeping Print On Point in the Dynamic Grocery Market

The grocery sector presents a serious juggling act for its content managers - being able to integrate an ever shifting information reserve across all media, accurately and effectively.

  1. chevron left iconKeeping Print on Point in the Dynamic Grocery Market
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Morag Cuddeford-JonesOctober 30, 2019
  • Digital Asset Management
  • Product Information Management
  • Content Management

The grocery sector presents one big paradox for its content managers. On the one hand, new product lines and promotions are negotiated months, if not years in advance. But on the other, prices and product information can change overnight. Being able to integrate an ever shifting information reserve across all media, accurately and effectively, is one serious juggling act.

When you start adding in subtle differentiation across 16 different regions while trying to keep the brand consistent for around 80 million customers in the way German grocery chain REWE has to, all across both digital and print production schedules, now that’s a lot of balls to keep in the air!

So process adaptability is key. With information coming from a whole range of departments – sales, marketing, merchandising and more – it needs to be collated, verified, stored, adapted and redistributed wherever and whenever it’s needed. The right people need access to information, using the right permissions without having to disrupt the workflow by asking for unnecessary permissions or revisions to content.

Maintaining such a coordinated approach to all product collateral is of course a challenge in the digital sphere, and when it comes to print production the same challenges take on a whole new level of complexity. This may, of course, beg the question – why keep using print when digital is so much more flexible?

The simple answer is that print can still be an effective and valued part of any omnichannel strategy, if it is done right. Direct mail is referred to multiple times in customers’ homes, is more likely to grab a customer’s attentions, and boosts levels of online engagement through personalized mail drops. Print collateral can remain in consumers’ homes for several weeks – a reminder of that deal or that reduction which they have not yet got round to buying.

But that doesn’t mean that marketers can afford to be lazy with printed materials. Information needs to be up to date, attractive and varied. It also needs to be audience appropriate and, where possible, personalized. This means producing multiple iterations with subtle regional content variations, all against a rapid and frequent schedule.

But REWE does just this. With weekly sales brochures for each regional market, displaying local offers, product information and prices, its print production is managing to stay relevant to its customers in the digital age. If you’re interested, you can learn more about how REWE and other retailers are making a true business asset out of their print collateral in this whitepaper.

Of course, these needs don’t stay static. New product lines and service propositions are added, the company itself might grow and enter new markets or customer segments. This generates new data flows and new content needs. And while there is no doubt that systems need to be automated in order to cater to the huge demands of an organization as large as REWE, they also need to be adaptable.

When bringing censhare on board, REWE took its implementation a step further by engaging censhare’s Strategic Partner, software development and information systems consultancy, MSP, to help mould the system into a bespoke solution for the company that would be able to evolve alongside its needs. It is this adaptability that has allowed the grocery chain to process ever larger volumes of information while generating large returns.

By being able to automate, manage and respond to the fluid and wide ranging demands of REWE’s extensive advertising needs, the censhare Digital Asset Management (DAM) system helped the grocer achieve 75% greater advertising production efficiency. It also eliminated the previous potential for pricing errors by 100% – no mean feat. Most importantly, however, censhare will continue to grow and evolve alongside REWE, delivering new solutions to next generation challenges.

To discover more about how censhare, MSP and REWE worked together to create a fully flexible and responsive DAM solution, you can download the success story here.

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Morag Cuddeford-Jones
Morag Cuddeford-Jones is a writer, editor and broadcaster. She has been working in marketing, business, and the SaaS space for more than 20 years. With experience interviewing C-Suite executives and working in tech, Morag has gained a unique insight into both the evolving martech landscape and the impact digital transformation has on consumer and B2B brands.

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