Nov 29, 2019 | Finance
There is a tendency among European (more specifically German) managers and decision makers to think that Marketing is something only related to a well conducted promotion campaign in order to maximize sales and that Marketing is more related to mass consumption products rather than to capital goods or services in B2B environments; Marketing is maybe one of the Management areas less valued by European / German Capital-Goods-Companies, where decision making is left to Marketing departments and managers who organize the participation in trade shows and design technical flyers and some promotional activities. Marketing is seen as a secondary activity and an accessory second to other operational areas like Product design, or production.
IVAN ZUBIAGA – Trade shows
Although over the years these flaws have been pointed out, very little has been made in order to correct this situation more specifically within the German “MITTELSTAND”.
Maybe unwillingly and unknowingly the classic German Marketing strategy has been over the years one thing: the focus on the product and within it: QUALITY, or better said: excellence in producing high quality products. This function is very important when a product is being sold in competitive environments however, more and more companies from all over the world have learned to also producing quality products but to a lower cost. Globalization has brought to our door´s competition from everywhere and this companies are nimble and getting more knowledgeable. So, although quality must be part of the equation, Marketing needs to interact much earlier in the product-development or problem-solving process in order to gain better traction within the company and enable an easier and successful access to final customers.
American companies on the other hand, are more aggressive when it comes to facilitate transactions in the marketplace and use Marketing as a strategic tool that goes through all levels within a company. And this is what German companies should emulate.
IVAN ZUBIAGA – Quality from all over the world
Marketing is not an isolated island within the company, it should be the backbone of the company that interacts with all departments from a very early stage in order to produce the best results when for example, launching new successful products. Marketing is a “philosophy ” and the CEO of any company should make Marketing the soul of the company.
Marketing is like dealing with “applied strategy”, it gathers first the data and inputs from the market place, with information from potential customers, tendencies, threats and opportunities; then a company can define specific goals to attend new needs or defend existing positions within a specific market, here Marketing should be involved in defining the path within the company, coordinating and helping define the best way to go, maybe the answer to the information from the market place is just an adjustment to one or some of the P´s of the Marketing mix, or maybe the answer is to enhance some characteristics of an existing product based on new trends, tastes or needs of existing or potential customers. The coordination should go all over the next steps through the value chain of the company including discussions about target-costing within production in order to match or enhance existing pricing in the Marketplace or to defend from attacks from other competitors and, finally an action plan to support the new strategy should define if a specific promotion campaign is needed, and to what it should appeal in a customer and how the sales force should interact with customers when transmitting this new messages.
Marketing is key and it is not only about creating nice brochures and flyers or implementing some adds and commercials over the existing media. Marketing is much more than that and companies are well served if they start taking the first steps towards making Marketing a strategic activity within the organization.
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Ivan Zubiaga
Nov 28, 2019 | Finance
Kreuzlingen, Switzerland, November 2019 – The E-Invoicing Exchange Summit took place in Singapore on November 5 and 6, 2019. Almost 150 international experts, thought leaders and key decision-makers from 33 nations gathered to discuss best practices, new market developments, international solutions, and formed valuable, long-lasting business partnerships.
With the ASEAN region now approaching the implementation at full speed, topics at the E-Invoicing Exchange Summit highlighted Singapore”s first experiences in becoming a PEPPOL authority, and their strategy to onboard businesses to E-Invoicing. In the Singapore keynote IMDA”s Director-General for International Affairs made clear what important part E-Invoicing plays in Singapore”s strategy for a digital economy.
In the multinational, top-flight panels of experts the harmonization of different initiatives towards a truly global interoperability framework as well as the ASEAN perspective on E-Invoicing have been discussed intensively.
Presentations from South Korea, India and Taiwan showed their current status of implementation and the plans for a fast roll-out in the near future. More presentations gave insights into the legislative changes to new tax reporting requirements up to real time E-Invoicing requirements via government platforms. Country insights from Europe, Kazakhstan, Australia and New Zealand rounded off the convincing two day agenda.
Nov 28, 2019 | Finance
This year”s IAAPA Expo was a great success for the whole VITO team! The global association for the
attractions industry, presented their 2019 Brass Ring Awards on Wednesday,
November 20th during the Expo in Orlando, Florida. VITO has been awarded twice in the category
Food Services for the Best New Product. Named for the rings given to carousel riders at the very
first amusement parks, the IAAPA Brass Ring Award symbolize achievement of excellence and are
considered one of the global attractions industry”s most prestigious honors.
Speaking of excellence, providing the best frying oil filtration and therefore an overall frying oil
management to our customers has always stood at the heart of our philosophy. “Winning the second
place as the best new product with the FT 440 frying oil tester and the very first place with VITO 80
connect is a great achievement and underlines our mission in setting the standard for quality and
innovation in the HORECA sector.”, says Andreas Schmidt, CEO VITO AG Germany.
The FT 440 determines the temperature and the quality of the frying oil by measuring the “Total
Polar Material” (TPM) content in the oil. The tester gives an accurate overview of the quality
of the frying medium in a percentage value and gives clear warning when it is time to dispose the fat.
The VITO 80 cleans the oil and provides an easy and hygienic filtration in the kitchen. Like every
VITO oil filter system the VITO 80 provides a microfiltration up to 0.2 μin. As an additional
feature no chemicals are needed to clean the oil, which preserves the optimal taste of the fried
dishes. This year major changes were introduced to the VITO 80 oil filter system. Not only the overall
performance was increased but the VITO system is now connected!
The new VITO 80 oil filter system is wifi ready, opening completely new ways of control and oil
management. Usage can be easily read out with a smartphone or just have the VITO send frequent
email reports about the usage.
For more information on our award winning product line, visit www.vito.ag
or give us a call at +49 7461 962890.
Nov 28, 2019 | Tech
October 7, 2019: LSoft Technologies, a leading developer of disk utilities including file recovery and drive imaging software, is proud to announce the launch of NTFS Recovery Toolkit version 12 – its popular set of data recovery utilies. An all-new version sporting many improvements, this edition ships with Active@ File Recovery 19 and Active@ Partition Recovery 19. Both tools feature many tweaks and bug fixes and support for new file signatures to make recovering data easier and more reliable than ever. There’s also a new recovery kernel and improved support for NTFS volumes in Windows Storage Spaces and drives formatted with 4 KB sector sizes.
What does NTFS Recovery Toolkit include?
NTFS Recovery Toolkit is a set of tools for analyzing problems and resolving issues with NTFS-formatted partitions. However, the included data recovery tools work with any kind of writable storage media, as well as with file systems natively supported by Windows, Linux, and macOS. There’s a step-by-step guide included to walk you through the process of recovering data either manually or automatically. For expert users, there’s the Disk Editor utility, which provides a way to edit the content of raw disk sectors on any writable storage media. Another tool included is the freeware partition manager, which greatly extends upon the limited capabilities of the tool provided in Windows to let you create, delete, extend, format, and change the logical divisions on your hard drive.
To get started with the latest edition of NTFS Recovery Toolkit, download the freeware version at http://www.ntfs.com/recovery-toolkit.htm.
About Lsoft Technogies
LSoft Technologies Inc. is a worldwide leader in data recovery software technologies. Since its inception in 1998, LSoft’s mission has been to create a software framework for your data security. LSoft’s current vision is tied to a strong commitment to the latest technologies that expand the power and reach of PCs for its users.
Nov 27, 2019 | Uncategorized
Dietzenbach, Germany, 27th November 2019 – In order to meet the demand for reusable transport layer pads, Cartonplast Group has invested in a new service and logistics center in Schweitenkirchen, Germany. Cartonplast (CPL) opened a new service and logistics center in Schweitenkirchen at the end of October. In July, the 5,000 square metre hall was rented and after only three months of construction, the new location for the service of rentable reusable transport layer pads was put into operation. At the beginning of July, the installation of two ultra-modern, environmentally friendly cleaning systems for the plastic layer pads (PLPs) began. The installations were successfully completed within a very short time and the “three-shift operation around the clock” has been running since the end of October. 15 million PLPs are inspected here every year, hygienically cleaned and delivered to customers in the container industry (glass and PET containers and cans) and returned. Defective polypropylene
intermediate layers are 100 percent recycled and processed into new ones, which are then reintroduced into the logistics cycle. The company currently has 20 new employees in Schweitenkirchen.
“With an increased service capacity in Southern Germany, we can guarantee fast delivery times due to the shortened transport routes and store the layers pads for the service orders professionally until they are called off. With this growth in investment, the highly modern cleaning systems and our highly motivated employees, we are meeting all future challenges,” says Olaf Langenstein – Production Manager Germany.
Investment in sustainable business development and commitment to reuse
CPL is investing a total of around two million euros in the new plant, which is to be expanded in the future. Next year it is planned to also clean plastic pallets at this location. The newly developed pallets, especially for the glass container industry, are very well received on the market and this also made this growth step necessary to expand the logistics network. Planning also focused on optimising transport routes and costs, as the company has many customers in southern Germany, Austria, Italy and the Balkans. As a result, CPL has moved closer to its customers in southern Germany and Europe and the transport routes are shorter and more efficient.
CPL has also invested in new facilities in order to ensure the best workflows while ensuring an efficient workflow. The focus was also on the optimal workplace design for the employees. Both the individual requirements of the employees and the obligation to design workplaces in
accordance with health aspects were met here as well as at the other service locations. In addition to the cleaning systems, the new production hall also houses an intermediate storage facility and quality assurance, so that an optimum workflow is guaranteed. Bright office space and social rooms are also integrated.
“The current investment in our new location in Schweitenkirchen secures our growth”, says Michael Heikenfeld, CSO of Cartonplast, “and also through the newly developed pallets in combination with our layer pads we are now ideally positioned with a one-stop transport service for our customers”, adds Thomas Grimm, Head of Supply Chain Management. “This investment helps us to meet the continuing high demand for plastic layer pads for transport. The use of reusable transport products is growing in the market and with the market, securing jobs in Schweitenkirchen as well as at the other Cartonplast sites,” sums up Serkan Koray, CEO of Cartonplast.
ISO 9001 and ISO 22000 certification after opening in Schweitenkirchen
The ISO 9001 and ISO 22000 certification audit was successfully completed at the end of October, although the site had only been in operation for a very short time. This is an excellent performance of the whole team. With this certification, Cartonplast once again confirms that its quality management system at all Service Center locations worldwide meets the high market expectations and guarantees a high level of quality assurance throughout the entire service process for the layer pads.
“Cartonplast pays attention to an effective quality and environmental management system at all locations. The achievement of our corporate goals is reflected in the measurable quality results from our efficient and transparent service processes. And the best proof of our quality capability are our successfully completed ISO 9001 and ISO 22000 certification audits,” explains Sebastian Brzozowski, Head of QA.
Cartonplast, with its headquarters in Dietzenbach, Germany, uses its PLPs at more than 130 production sites in 20 countries to transport glass, cans and PET containers to the filling plants. The Outsourcing Transport System is successful worldwide with 7,300 participating bottlers mainly in the beverage and food industry in 30 countries. Currently, 45 million PLPs with more than 140 million circulations are in use each year in the environmentally friendly Closed Loop Pooling concept. As a company in the European top group of transport packaging, CPL strives to increase the impact of its rentable reusable transport products.
Photos are available here (https://www.cartonplast.com/index.php?id=443&L=2).
For further information, please contact Cartonplast Group by email at info@cartonplast.com or contact Michael Heikenfeld, Chief Sales Officer and Managing Director Cartonplast Group, michael.heikenfeld@cartonplast.com.
