Boss Paints gains time and efficiency with smart solutions
Boss Paints streamlined their annual production of over 1,000 packshots by collaborating with Catena Company. With a smart automation solution, labels and packshots are now generated automatically, ensuring consistent quality, and eliminating manual work. The result? More time for creativity and a seamless workflow, perfectly tailored to their needs.
Boss Paints, MASTER in quality paint products, stands out in a market dominated by multinationals. Their mission is as inspiring as it is straightforward: to make the world more beautiful with colour. To optimise their visual content creation, Boss Paints turned to the expertise of Catena Company. The results speak for themselves: with targeted training and customised automation Boss Paints achieved significant time savings and improved workflows.
Customised automation helps you automate repetitive and time-consuming tasks with smart, customised solutions. By aligning your existing systems more effectively with tools like middleware, scripting, and workflow software, you can significantly enhance efficiency. This results in less manual work and fewer errors. The beauty of customised automation lies in its ability to be fully tailored to your specific needs, without requiring major investments or drastic changes. It enables you to work faster, streamline your workflow, and focus more on delivering quality.
Visual content automation: the intake
At Catena Company, we start by thoroughly examining current work processes, and this was no different with Boss Paints. It quickly became apparent that too many manual and repetitive tasks were being performed. For instance, the company was manually creating and processing over a thousand packshots each year for their product catalogues, website and various other communications. The process worked as follows:
Boss Paints designed labels in Photoshop, each with different specifications, icons, designs and languages. These labels were then printed and applied to the corresponding paint pots to create packshots. The packshots had to be photographed consistently, with uniform shooting position, lighting, and other factors. However, maintaining this consistency in quality proved to be a challenge.
Conclusion: visual content creation at Boss Paints was a painfully time-consuming activity, even more so when updates or corrections were required, forcing the company to repeat the entire process from scratch.
Automation to the rescue
Catena Company had already worked successfully with Boss Paints in the past to automate marketing processes. This time, Stefaan Geeraert, IT Manager at Boss Paints, enlisted Catena’s expertise to streamline and make the packshot creation process more efficient. The goal? Save time and resources by:
- Making changes in real time, ensuring new labels or tags are instantly ready
- Ensuring consistent quality for a uniform product experience on every channel
- Reduced reliance on graphic specialists
- Enabling new and modern output formats, such as 3D PDF renderings
Our workflow specialists investigated the process and developed a solution to format labels automatically. This was achieved by integrating a link with the Boss Paints PIM and ERP systems, significantly simplifying the process.
Content creation à la carte
Developing labels with one push of a button
Good news, the time-consuming process of creating labels in Photoshop has now been replaced by an automated workflow. By linking InDesign templates to the PIM database, labels are now generated automatically, seamlessly accommodating various layout requirements, such as icons in different colours and custom texts. Additionally, all designs comply with the necessary legal requirements and regulations for their applications.
The result? With the integration of an online tool and Adobe InDesign templates, a print-ready PDF of the label is now automatically generated – completely eliminating the need for manual intervention.
Automated creation of packshots
Even more impressive features have been implemented. A unique Photoshop template was developed for each package, customised to the specific dimensions, diameter, and height of the paint pot. In addition, variations of these templates were created to account for differences, such as the colour of the lid or jar.
The product labels, supplied as PDFs, are now automatically added to the templates. The result is available in various formats, such as PSD, TIFF, or JPEG, and can be used directly for applications such as web shops, publicity, catalogues, photo archives, inventory, and publications.
Collaboration is the key to success
When automating workflows, a thorough understanding of each process step is crucial. “For such projects, you don’t need a supplier – you need a partner,” says Stefaan Geeraert, IT Manager at Boss Paints. “Catena Company fulfilled that role perfectly. They collaborated with us, implemented the solution, and provided excellent support.”
The result of this partnership is a fully automated workflow. At the touch of a button, a label is flawlessly generated and applied to the paint pot in Adobe Photoshop, instantly producing a finished packshot. The process is entirely free of manual intervention, significantly reducing both times spent and the risk of errors.
Moreover, to fully leverage the potential of customised automation, colleagues at Boss Paints have the opportunity to attend tailored training courses at Catena Company. These sessions ensure they stay up to date with the latest tools and techniques, enabling them to work even more efficiently.
“To do such projects, you don’t need a supplier, you need a partner. This role was definitely fulfilled. Catena Company collaborated with us, implemented the solution, and provided an excellent support.” – Stefaan Geeraert, IT-Manager @ Boss Paints
Win the
battle of the brands
Start with automation of visual content
