Ghent, Belgium – Croatian packaging specialist Kaligraf has streamlined production and strengthened customer relationships following its investment in Esko’s Automation Engine and WebCenter. The market differentiation, faster time to market and new capabilities Kaligraf has gained with these Esko solutions have made it easier for the company to enter new and lucrative markets, including pharmaceutical packaging.

“Projects are handled faster and in a more structured way, making them easier to manage,” states Miho Karolyi, owner and managing director of the Zagreb specialist in packaging graphics production, proof printing and photo & post production. “WebCenter enables us to create much stronger relationships with customers today and will help us develop them in the longer term. A key advantage is the ability of the customer to monitor progress in real time and to understand what might be causing delays in his time to market. This enables both us as well as our customers to continue to streamline the workflow based on facts and actual performance. On top, we also drastically improved our production process with Automation Engine, enabling us to automate many repetitive tasks, taking time, cost and touches out of the production process.”

Karolyi credits WebCenter and Automation Engine with enabling this growth, adding, “Before we began using WebCenter, we were producing about 1,500 projects per year with 1,200 products. Now we are producing about 2,000 projects with more than 3,000 products per year. WebCenter and Automation Engine have helped us be more efficient and attract more business. We are looking at a bright future, thanks in large part to our partnership with Esko.”

Family owned, Kaligraf was established in 1994. The company is a leading regional provider of folding cartons, labels and flexible packaging. Kaligraf claims as customers the largest food production companies in the region (including Ledo, Jamnica, PIK Vrbovec, Zvijezda, Frikom, Dijamant, Franck, Carlsberg & Heineken), leading retail sales companies (such as Konzum & Mercator) and cosmetic company Neva.

Automation Engine: the heart of prepress automation

Automation is critical to any packaging operation in today’s highly competitive marketplace, and Kaligraf is no exception. “Automation engine is the heart of our prepress operation,” Karolyi explains. “By taking time and touches out of the production process, we not only save time and money, but significantly reduce possible errors. Automation Engine has made a significant contribution to our bottom line and overall customer satisfaction.”

WebCenter drives new revenue

Customer-facing WebCenter’s ability to manage packaging pre-production specification, approval and project life cycles is also helping Kaligraf grow and expand its market reach. “As a result of positive feedback from the market, especially concerning how easy it is to do business with us, my customer base is growing continuously,” comments Karolyi. “We are now moving into the pharma packaging industry because WebCenter makes it easy to manage the expectations of our customers and address different regulatory requirements in the four primary countries we serve - Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, Serbia and Slovenia. Our use of WebCenter gives us capabilities that are unique in our marketplace, and major customers are anxious to take advantage of them.” Kaligraf also benefits from the fact that WebCenter is GMP (Good Manufacturing Practice) compliant.

Transparency is key

According to Karolyi, these combined solutions are critical for the kind of work they do since there are so many people involved in the development of a single product. He states, “WebCenter saves us and our customers significant time and money across the entire development cycle, and with Automation Engine, we carry those savings through the production process as well. Since all activities are visible to everyone in the approval process, it is much easier to determine which stage has the biggest impact on the duration of the whole process and to work to streamline the process even more. A key benefit is that customers can understand exactly why projects are delayed, and they can see for themselves in real time exactly what is happening throughout the entire process. And for us, Automation Engine ensures that we can speed the project through production as quickly as possible once approvals have been granted.”

Word of mouth

Communication throughout the production cycle is vital. Karolyi adds, “Because of the improved communication, we are seeing simpler and smoother production cycles. Word gets around about these advantages, and we often have new customers coming to us because they are interested in how they can also benefit from our well-organized process flows.”

Esko Workflow brings benefits beyond WebCenter

In addition to WebCenter and Automation Engine, Kaligraf also uses Studio Visualizer to create an even more robust service offering. Since this workflow has been in place, Karolyi states, “Our efficiency and transparency has strengthened our relationships with existing customers, and we are able to attract new customers on an ongoing basis. I expect to have more than 400 customers linked to WebCenter within a year. All of Esko’s solutions have helped me grow my business by continuously reducing delivery times and by increasing the speed of production. Having a stronger value proposition also makes it difficult for our competitors to take market share from us.”

Changing market dynamics

Esko’s Development Manager, Workflow and Collaboration, Stijn Govaert comments, “Kaligraf has found that the implementation of WebCenter, along with Studio Visualizer and Automation Engine, has created a winning end-to-end workflow that is changing market dynamics in the region, to the benefit of Kaligraf and its customers. Not only has it made Kaligraf’s operation more efficient and cost effective, it has also helped the company better support its customer base and expand into new markets that will help it grow and prosper far into the future.”

Kaligraf is an excellent example of how Esko solutions can be used to gain market dominance and increase customer delight. The company is better able to manage all of the complexities of creating packaging, from specification and design through execution. It is a highly secure workflow that is easy to integrate with existing business systems, no matter what the size of the company.