Global Labeling Manufacturer Cuts Data Sheet Publishing in 8 Languages from 5 Days to 2 Days with Quark

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This Fortune 500 company is a multinational manufacturer and distributor of labeling and graphics products for all industries such as retail, consumer packaged goods and medical products.

Operational Efficiency Through Digital Transformation

This company designs and produces thousands of products for a wide variety of labeling solutions. The products can be highly technical due to their composition and are used by their customers to place on their own products to inform the end users of the details and instructions relating to them.

Previously, they operated a mostly manual process for orchestrating the data gathering, writing, assembling, and publishing of these vital data sheets. The start-to-finish process took five days for every new product data sheet in their legacy software system.

Once published, data sheets often require updating too and it would take one week for new product data in the company ERP systems to be manually updated on the customer-facing documents available on their website. As a result, data sheets were potentially inaccurate in the public domain which could, in the worst-case scenario, result in customer claims for compensation. The outdated product information available on the website could end up costing the business thousands of dollars every time.

This same manual approach was also liable to human errors being introduced to the data sheet content as writers and marketers copied and pasted between working documents, and there was no central place to store and reuse the most common building blocks that went into each data sheet.

The company recognized that this approach was no longer fit for purpose. There was a business drive to standardize its product data sheets for its three key business units by digitalizing the process.

Why Quark?

Today with Quark Publishing Platform (QPP), the business is publishing thousands of product data sheet PDFs in up to eight languages covering over 50k artefacts. Automated workflows and structured content templates eliminate the need for the error-prone manual working.

The software intelligently gathers the required information, such as the Bill of Materials, from the company’s ERP system for each data sheet, while other content components like the product description are written using QPP’s structured authoring tool. Components are stored inside the centralized Component Content Management System (CCMS) for easier access, collaboration, and reuse.

QPP swiftly pulls all these components together according to a defined templates for product data sheets. Different language variations, which are submitted into QPP directly by third-party translations agencies, are also stored inside QPP as content components. These are then assembled as ‘building blocks’ to publish accurate documents that are localized and regionalized. Different sub-brands even have personalized templates so they can retain their unique brand ‘look and feel’ and ensure the documents meet customer expectations.

Importantly, the business was able to configure Quark Publishing Platform to fit with its existing business systems and processes so that data sheets are now automatically assembled the moment a new product is created in the ERP system.

By digitally transforming their content production they now publish accurate and up-to-date product data sheets in just two days, which is a significant reduction from the previous five days. At the same time, the potential for customer compensation claims has been significantly reduced as customers access accurate information via the company’s website.