Gutenberg-on-line, part of DDB Worldwide, Omnicom Group

Gutenberg-on-Line, is a leader in the provision of printed marketing communications.  It produces catalogues and advertising media (posters and POS materials) for large retailers.  These materials support the marketing communications for products that are distributed through stores in France and throughout Europe.

Customer requirements :

• To build and make available a structured database for its retail customers that  would reference all their products.
• Enable real time, continuous updating of the contents and associated images that are used to describe the products .
• Allow buyers to select which products will be used in the composition of  catalogue pages.
• Reduce Time to Market as well as catalogue production time.

Marketing HotSpot solution :

• Knowbox in ASP mode for the management of the database.
• A page layout module for the integration of Knowbox data and content updating.
• Specific developments in response to customer requirements: management of tables, import of data from Excel, viewing of product listings in PDF mode etc..

Customer benefits :

• Simpler management of products and product ranges
• Faster response time in selecting the elements needed to produce the catalogues
• Shorter production time which allows last minute updating of content (prices, descriptions etc..)
• Availability of product information in different types of format for use in other applications (PDF, Excel..)

Gutenberg-online's website, here.

Dulac Média Partenaire

Dulac Média Partenaire, is a company with 150 staff located at Pacy-sur-Eure and over several years has developed an innovative and differentiated offering for its customers in the outsourced management of the production of complex publications, printing, and other value added services.
Under a new management team, Dulac Média Partenaire in alliance with Marketing HotSpot now offers unique services to customers that allow them to optimise their communication investments across publishing, magazines, and product catalogues.
Dulac Média Partenaire’s customers include : L’Equipe Magazine, Europrinting, Télé Z, Mondadori France, Editions Larivière, Bayard Presse, Super U, Altavia, Scanormande, Jeulin, Cobra, Castorama, JPG, etc..

Dulac Média Partenaire's website, here.

Renault

With a manufacturing and commercial presence in 118 countries, Renault imagines, designs, manufactures and sells innovative, safe and environmentally friendly vehicles.
This large international industrial group is constantly searching for productivity improvements and innovations.  The Product Marketing & Communications department is responsible for the marketing collaterals that support the customer communication for the company’s products. To allow its staff, and its partner advertising agencies, to work better, faster, and with more accuracy at reduced costs, it is evaluating the implementation of collaborative tools.  

Customer requirements :

• Reduce by several weeks the time taken to adapt and localise sales brochures and POS materials across all geographies
• Improve the collaboration and communication between the different central and local marketing teams
• Integrate the external partners in the production process such as agencies, production studios for printed materials, and e-brochures as well as translation agencies, with the team that produces the POS materials
• Reduce the process discontinuities in the collaborative work and production of publications.
• Enable the re-use of content
• Reduce costs in the overall process from the creation and management of content to re-usage, and multichannel delivery (print media, web, POS material)

Marketing HotSpot services :

• Definition of the functional specifications covering the entire project scope as defined by Renault
• Needs analysis of the product marketing communications department and of Renault partners
• Description of target processes and information flows
• Definition of the operating principles and organisation of the content database (images, videos, texts, iconography etc.) for multichannel use
• Definition of the processes for updating content and publishing workflows
• Description of collaborative workflows and the management of associated user rights
• Descriptions of the Content Management System workflows, and the adaptation processes for brochures and POS materials
• Definition of a deployment plan
• Assessment of expected economic benefits

Renault's website, here.

Verbe

Verbe is an agency specialising in publishing, management and multichannel delivery of content for international corporate clients.  Verbe is a leading agency in its field and is part of the Publicis Consultants I Worldwide network.
Field of collaboration :
Verbe’s customers have a large spectrum of requirements for tools in the areas of multimedia content management, publishing, collaborative workflows, content adaptation and localisation solutions.  They  also need consultancy and advice in the analysis, building and deployment of solutions.  This has led Marketing HotSpot and Verbe to collaborate closely and efficiently on numerous projects.

Marketing HotSpot accompanies Verbe in instances where high levels of skill and know-how are required in very specific areas such as:

• Implementation of publishing and content management solutions for large international companies
• Needs analysis for publishing, creating, managing and distributing content over multiple channels
• Drawing up specifications as the initial step in providing a solution
• Consultancy and partnering in defining tenders for the provision of adaptation and collaborative tools and platforms etc.

Verbe's website, here.

Arnould (electrical equipment), Groupe Legrand

Arnould is a subsidiary of Legrand, a multinational corporation with 3.7B€ in revenues that designs, manufactures, and distributes electrical equipment.  The group sells in different markets under several brands of which the main ones are: Arnould, Planet-Wattohm, and Cofrel.

Situation :
The company manages approximately 12 000 references under 3 brands and communicates via the following media :

• A paper catalogue for each brand
• Paper pricing sheets, twice a year
• An e-catalogue on a web site accessible via an extranet
• The Voltimum e-commerce market place

Customer requirements :

• To centralise product information for use on different media and collaterals
• To facilitate collaborative work between the product marketing function and marketing communication staff working with product data
• Reduce the time taken to produce marketing materials
• Ensure coherence and integrity in product information across different marketing collaterals
• Provide a product information database accessible internally by sales and support staff as well as externally by customers
• Provide a tool for easy updates of the Voltimum e-commerce platform

Marketing HotSpot solution :

• The implementation of KnowBox, a PIM (product information management) solution to centralise product data in a repository for re-use and repurposing in multichannel marketing communications
• As an ASP solution, it is accessible by all authorised users from a simple web navigator

Benefits :

• Coherent and reliable product data which is centralised and easily accessible by the Internet.
• The data can be updated without specialised technical knowledge
• The time taken to produce pricing sheets has reduced from 2 months to 1 week from start to finish
• The updating of the Voltimum e-commerce platform now only requires the preparation of data; the updating itself is common with the updating of the web site’s e-catalogue

Groupe Arnould's website, here.

Institut Français de Gestion (IFG)

IFG, the number 2 in the sector of providing professional training and consulting, offers many different curricula  (there are more than 700 courses in its catalogue).  IFG publishes an annual paper catalogue and an e-catalogue on its web site.

Customer requirements :
In the context of continually improving the creation of its annual catalogue of training courses and the updating of its web site, IFG was faced with the following requirements :

• To reduce the correction/revision cycle time
• To centralise and rationalise  information within a collaborative workspace
• To maintain integrity of the data used by all the staff
• To replicate validated data on its web site
• To provide project managers with an interactive tool to enrich training curricula
• To reduce both the time taken and the costs of producing the catalogue
• To increase the degree of personnalisation and segmentation in the IFG offering

Marketing HotSpot solution :
Marketing HotSpot implemented a solution for content management that supplies both paper based collaterals (catalogue and flyers) and the corporate web site with information without having to reprocess it beforehand.
It has also provided the tools and processes to personalise catalogues and allow segmented or targetted customer communications
IFG now possesses a unique repository of the courses it offers, accessible to authorised users to control, edit and validate the content.
A personalised web interface was provided that allows the Marketing and the Communication departments to access on-line services that are linked to the database, which immediately provides “always up-to-date” information.

IFG's website, here.

Marmara

With more than 30 years experience, Marmara has established itself in the travel market and is positioned as a specialist in holidays in Greece, Tunisia, Turkey, and Egypt.
In the process of creating its catalogues, Marmara is confronted with the problem of updating its published price sheets.  The information is strategic in the travel business, and is the subject of last minute modifications.

Customer requirements :
The time needed to create, validate and format the tables for the entire offering was becoming incompatible with the speed at which the marketing department could respond. The process needed to be speeded up.

Marketing HotSpot solution :
Following  discussions with the desk-top publishing staff and the internal IT group, Marketing Hotspot proposed the implementation of a simple ASP solution to create and update price tables which would also allow their direct  integration into the final page layout.

Customer benefits :
Once the solution was deployed the positive results were immediate for the company.

• Instant creation of pricing tables
• Reduction by 3 weeks to one month in the time needed to create the tables by the desk-top publishing staff
• Despite a delay of one month in the availability of prices, Marmara's catalogue was produced before the competition.

The future :
The company is now evaluating the opportunity to extend the solution to process other elements of the catalogue page.

Marmara's website, here.

Alliage

Alliage is a pre-media, pre-press production and content management platform for marketeers, advertising agencies, and publishers.
An expert in graphics processes, Alliage produces press and internal communication magazines, corporate publications, catalogues, brochures, and many other printed materials.
Alliage offers many services to its clients which allows them to concentrate on their core processes.  These services rely in many instances on Marketing HotSpot solutions to optimise complete processes: from the organisation of the project through collaborative production, to the delivery of the finished products. This partnership demonstrates the organisational and economic rationale for using collaborative solutions in the context of editorial and campaign execution

Alliage's website, here.