Kao creates high-value-added products that enrich the lives of consumers around the world. Through its portfolio of over 20 leading brands such as Attack, Bioré, Goldwell, Jergens, John Frieda, Kanebo, Laurier, Merries, and Molton Brown, Kao is part of the everyday lives of people in Asia, Oceania, North America, and Europe. Combined with its chemical division, which contributes to a wide range of industries, Kao generates about 1,400 billion yen in annual sales. Kao employs about 33,000 people worldwide and has 130 years of history in innovation. The company’s artwork process involves several internal and external contributors. Internally, the Marketing, Legal, Regulatory, Technical Claims, Data Management, Document Control, and Consumer Care teams all provide input to artwork development, as well as formulators, scientists, and packaging development engineers.
Kao handles all artwork design in-house, while artwork production is done by external agencies. For the Global Consumer Care business, the Creative Marketing department leads the artwork development process from Kao’s US headquarters in Cincinnati, Ohio. In 2011, Creative Marketing launched Loftware Smartflow for its packaging artwork process for mass brands in the Americas and EMEA. In 2016, Smartflow was adopted for mass brands in Japan as well. Now it is the go-to solution for managing all the company’s artwork and content development workflows and processes.
What we needed to be more efficient, not just the Creative Department, but all of the organization, was a system to drive our process forward. The organization needed support to redefine and guide our processes. And that’s where Smartflow came in.
Laura Helton
Associate Director, Creative Marketing
Prior to implementing Smartflow, Kao had a largely manual artwork review and approval process. Some creative teams were still using job jackets, printing out artwork and sitting around the table to review it. In the Cincinnati office, they had a system in place; however, it only captured electronic signatures. Now, with Smartflow, the team at Kao can collaborate online to review and approve packaging artworks.
It seems like a very small thing – guiding people in that way and holding them accountable for things they’re supposed to be doing – but it’s absolutely colossal.
Before implementing Smartflow, Kao didn’t have automated artwork comparison capabilities and no real audit trail – just a record of a rejection or an approval. One of the key factors for Kao selecting Smartflow was the application’s DaVinci viewer. DaVinci includes artwork comparison tools Kao can use to compare versions of artwork, which help reviewers immediately recognize what has changed from version to version. Users can annotate in real time, comment on elements of each artwork version and approve a version as a part of a workflow process. And Smartflow maintains a full audit history of all annotations.
Kao was also looking for an Artwork Management solution that would help them drive the approval process forward. Smartflow has helped them to instill discipline and a sense of responsibility among stakeholders that they didn’t have before. Before implementing Smartflow, Kao spent time retraining the organization on the artwork process. This way, employees would understand the process and recognize that it was a standalone element they needed to adhere to, independent of the system. Kao then introduced Smartflow, which holds each individual accountable for timings, deadlines and specific tasks, such as reviewing, checking and providing feedback. Smartflow has become such an integral part of the organization that employees now refuse to work outside of the system.
We have applied this application to anything we can that requires getting from point A to point B. We use it for anything that needs to be driven forward. It’s all down to the efficiency and accountability, and just having everything in one place. I don’t think people could function without it.
