Based in Eislingen, Germany, Dr Scheller is a family owned manufacturer of skin and dental care products and cosmetics. The company was founded in 1944 and has over 400 employees.

Like many manufacturing organizations, Dr Scheller was finding that a key challenge to its business was managing the process for the preparation, launch and positioning of its new products. In order to successfully launch new products into the market it is imperative for the marketing and sales teams to closely monitor development from conception through production. For example, with dental products such as toothpaste, several stages of development must take place before a new product is ready to be supplied to customers; many changes may be made, and the end product is often considerably different from the concept.

Dr Scheller was using a manual, paper-based process to record each change as it occurred during the development process and teams were updated in person on an ad hoc basis. This meant that information was often misplaced, and in some cases was not recorded at all. The result was a lack of coordination between the departments involved, causing delays in getting new products to market, or disappointing product launches. In addition, the company needed a solution which could help manage its customer services function. Dealing with customer enquiries was a complex process, as employees would first need to identify which of the many products the enquiry related to, followed by routing the enquiry to the correct department. Manual routing of enquiries became extremely time intensive due to the large amounts of correspondence received and the involvement of multiple departments within the organization.

Dr Scheller selected Metastorm BPM™, a business process management solution, to create a more efficient product development process with greater transparency for its staff. A key requirement for this decision was the need for a solution which would be easy to implement and user-friendly. Metastorm BPM met the challenge and was implemented company-wide in only six months.

Metastorm BPM links Dr Scheller’s internal communication and information tools together, building a single transparent system. When a new product is in development, the production team logs all the details onto a central system which is visible and accessible to all employees within the company. Team members can then update information as it moves through the production process, alerting everyone to changes. With this new system in place all employees – from the product design team to sales and marketing – can view the progress of a new product, including any delays or changes that occur throughout the testing process. In circumstances when delays occur, launch plans can be altered accordingly.

Metastorm’s technology also provides an automatic tracker for customer enquires which are received via the Dr Scheller website. When a customer query is received, alerts are sent to the appropriate staff members in order to create a corresponding file on the system. Quality control staff members then check to identify whether the problem is a product fault, or has arisen through user error. When the check is complete the correct department is informed and can manage the customer appropriately.