The Challenge
Hormel Foods Corp. (HFC) is a multinational manufacturer and marketer of brand-name food and meat products. Although the HFC Corporate Packaging department had a solid paper-based process in place, the lack of an electronic system to support that process made project management and tracking difficult. The packaging development workflow process included routing physical folders of project data, copy, keylines and color proofs. Delays with lost or misplaced files resulted in workflow speed being compromised. In addition, there was no system in place for storing digital brand assets. HFC began the search for a Digital Asset Management and Workflow solution that would give them the traceability and transparency they required, without having to reengineer their processes.
The Solution
After a comprehensive needs analysis, HFC selected BLUE™. The key decision criteria included a solution that could manage HFC’s workflow, a partner with a high level of expertise in complex packaging workflows, and a secure and robust technology platform.
Rebranded to CP3X, with a customized web interface, the solution was deployed in a phased approach. The initial phase was for retail-branded projects followed by Food Service, corrugated, government approval, and subsidiary reviews. The Digital Asset Management module was set up to manage brandmarks/guidelines, design, dielines, keylines, package scans, pallet patterns, government approval files, print miniatures, reference files, and more. Recognizing the importance of training, HFC used BLUE experts to provide “train-the-trainer” sessions, which gave the HFC team the knowledge they needed to fully deploy the system.
