Carrefour market

During 2009, a total of 1,000 Champion stores switched over to the Carrefour Market brand. The joint management of these two store chains has resulted in a doubling of the number of catalog pages.

In conjunction with this tremendous shift, Carrefour Market has the distinction of producing versions for individual markets. In other words, for the same sales operation, several versions of the same catalog are segmented by outlet size.

Problem areas and needs

Until now, each version of a catalogue required reincorporating all that had been previously produced. No benefit could be derived from the work already completed on a given catalogue.
The risk of introducing errors grew, especially relative to price updates or last-minute labeling changes, since any modification on a catalog had to be manually introduced into every other version.

This situation was exacerbated by a highly-regimented process that tended to settle problems through a rigid protocol. The three main process phases were actually causing interruptions in the sequence:
- Style guide specifications
- Content preparation
- Page execution

Since each of these phases is entirely distinct, none could start up before the previous one had been completed. Moreover, during the transition from one phase to the next, the schedule was severely altered. As the project advanced, considerable increases in workload were being observed.

In addition, the execution phase needed to be greatly extended since this was the only time any real control was possible, along the lines of correcting mistakes that could not be anticipated.
This phenomenon takes on far greater significance when, like here, four catalogs versions need to be managed simultaneously.
The problem was intensified by the fact that both the Carrefour Market and prepress teams were not sharing the same design tool, which naturally impeded any effective collaboration.

The consequences of this suboptimal organization were:
- A very long production schedule, yet with a high risk of not being met due to a lack of built-in flexibility;
- An exponentially-increasing workload for finalization, requiring overtime or in many cases relying on temp personnel to meet the printing deadline.

Advantages of the solution sought by Carrefour Market: PageOnDemand.com

With PageOnDemand.com, the most voluminous catalog version is produced by itself through finalizing the proofs. The other smaller versions are then tied to this base version, such that the data are always updated universally without preventing any version-specific formatting.

At the same time, schedule interruptions have been eliminated by introducing overlapping phases. The style guide may be refined and improved even after initiating the design phase. The early validation of content is facilitated by automatic preliminary layouts that, by not requiring the prepress step, provide the setting for a fully autonomous work program from the advertiser’s standpoint. The execution phase, while much shorter, becomes more highly professionalized. As a result of using templates that feed into the automatic preliminary layouts, “formatting know-how” has now been moved further upstream in the process. It is no longer necessary to garner excessive expertise with the advertiser’s formatting rules in order to terminate execution.

The design methods proposed by PageOnDemand.com perfectly match the needs experienced by Carrefour Market and, more generally, the real needs of catalog production processes: better timed production phases, without any interruptions and during which each team enjoys total visibility over progress, both page-by-page and across the various versions.

Thanks to the new practices featured on PageOnDemand.com, a constant effort curve is obtained with a substantially lower amplitude. PageOnDemand.com combines a more natural approach to catalog production with the possibility of making last-minute changes free of worries.

Tangible benefits for Carrefour Market

With PageOnDemand.com, all information (texts, images, prices) modified at the last minute in any catalog version automatically gets reflected, in complete security, within all other versions. The risk of introducing errors has been removed.

Assisted by PageOnDemand.com, schedules have been compressed by a net 20 days, leading to greater flexibility for buyers and producing more catalogs at the same staffing levels for advertising managers. Workload patterns are kept smooth, which avoids reliance on overtime hours or temp hiring.

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