Karlsberg Direkt optimises product content management with BYRD

Karlsberg Direkt, the leading specialist beverage wholesaler in Saarland and parts of Rhineland-Palatinate, is also part of Karlsberg group. The online shop www.karlsberg-direkt.de enables beverage retailers and restaurants in the region to order quickly and easily, but keeping the portal's product catalogue up to date has proven a Herculean task for Karlsberg Direkt to date. “Manufacturers change their products in the middle of the year, and this usually overwhelms regional suppliers in particular with digital product data management,” explains Hadi Hajdarevic, Senior Digital Marketing Manager at Karlsberg.

Karlsberg Direkt therefore opted for BYRD from the specialists BAYARD – which has been part of the Markant Group since the beginning of the year – as its consistent Product Information Management (PIM) solution. The beverage wholesaler had already previously used other master data services from Markant Group. The new technology from BAYARD now efficiently supports Karlsberg Direkt to consolidate, automatically check, validate and enrich the product content. Going forward, the specialist wholesaler's suppliers can either enter their product data with BYRD's user-friendly portal b-managed, upload their data from Excel documents or transmit it to Karlsberg Direkt via the Global Data Synchronisation Network (GDSN).

By implementing the consistent product data platform, Karlsberg group will lay the foundation for providing all their online shops, including those of their brewery, with product content in a consistent manner from a single source of truth.

The decision to choose BAYARD as the technology service provider was an easy one for Karlsberg Direkt: “The BYRD platform is as user-friendly as it should be. Working with it is fun,” says Hadi Hajdarevic. He deliberately chose BYRD as a standardised industry solution. Customised inhouse development would have been much more expensive – the licence price for BYRD was very attractive. “The BAYARD team is perfectly acquainted with the labelling requirements under the German and also French food regulations,” says Hadi Hajdarevic. The fact that BAYARD is also represented in France with its own national unit was a clear advantage as well.

Above all, Hadi Hajdarevic was convinced by the fact that the BAYARD team agreed to implement BYRD at Karlsberg Direkt within a few weeks. BAYARD had in fact carried out essential steps towards the roll-out immediately after the signing of the contract. Hadi Hajdarevic is very happy about the cooperation with BAYARD's consultants: “BAYARD talks straight. That's great. You know what you're getting and what you're not.”