CXF TOOLBOX & CXF CLOUD
Global communication of brand colors – consistent and effective
Our customer does business in more than 150 countries and has a large collection of over 200 brands. Several global players are included. They are one of the top consumer products companies in the world – according to their economic performance as well as their consumer relationship. Of course, color management is enormously important for them, because the look and feel of the brands, especially brand colors, always need to be perfect.
Needless to say, the company works with many different types of suppliers like packaging separators and printing companies all over the world. This caused a lot of color communication challenges in the past related to the exchange of data and printing results.
On the one hand, several packaging separators edit and prepare data, put them in a color library and on the other hand, printing companies extract the data and produce with different printing machines and inks in individual environments. This workflow creates a complex environment and errors may occur which lead to a variation of printing results. But, of course the printing outcomes of the product labels, packaging or advertising material need to look accurate and consistent as defined by the designer – in every country and over time. This is vitally important for the company itself and their individual brands. That means, the data, e.g. color aims, need to be communicated correctly between all involved parties. And the cooperation with the suppliers and the edited data files have to fit into the internal workflow. This includes, that the company has to be able to proof the results easily by themselves. For example, to check, if spot colors are correct and quality standards are reached.
„It´s not just an application, it´s a customized solution.“
Meeting the challenges
Working with CxF data was nothing new for our customer. This global player already knew the advantages of CxF and had an existing color library, where suppliers could leverage that data to work with. Unfortunately, the library was not well-organized or ready to use. It contained a lot of duplicate color data or data that was incomplete to the current CxF-4 standard. This was the first challenge in the process.
Additionally, the customer required a central location to administer and communicate CxF data, which any of its suppliers would be able to easily access and utilize. CxF Toolbox & CxF Cloud offered all of the desired functionality. Therefore, the common journey began with the organization of the company´s colour library. The first task was to clean and organize the existing CxF library. In the next step, a standard operating procedure (SOP) was established and communicated to all suppliers to ensure the SOP worked well and delivered the required results.
An onboarding process was started to synchronize the suppliers color data, equipment and teach all involved parties how to use the tool, either personally or by webinars. The initial rollout phase took roughly one year. By the second year our customer was already using CGS ORIS CxF software across their global network of suppliers. The functional core benefits of CxF Toolbox & CxF Cloud were obvious to them, but the main reason they selected CGS ORIS as a strategic partner was the added value, extended by excellent service and support. They expressed: “CGS ORIS listened to our needs and built a solution for us” and “it is incredibly easy to gain secure access to our brand colors, these are our crown jewels”, which creates confidence in the supplier, and makes it easy to reach the aim to be one team with one color scheme“.
It was essential for them to “own” their color library and have the flexibility to easily create their own CxF color definitions, instead of using alternative solutions with limited customization capabilities. CxF Toolbox & CxF Cloud on the contrary are holistic solutions, which enable end users to communicate and even export spot colors directly, e.g. for ink formulation.
CGS ORIS tools offer the ability to characterize printing substrate during the creation of CxF data, they are not pre-determined. CGS ORIS makes it possible to verify supplier measurements, which is essential for quality assurance, and to certify color accuracy. To sum up, this international brand owner benefited greatly by having full customization capabilities and the ability to brand CxF Toolbox & CxF Cloud as the their own.
„CGS ORIS believes strongly in the benefits of CxF standards. This project was unique and exciting, offering both companies an opportunity to work together to develop a solution that elevated their ability to create and communicate brand colors like never seen before. CGS ORIS did not just sell a software product to the customer, we were there to clearly understand the individual company needs and requirements to develop a customized solution and services that delivered on those needs. Listening to and understanding our customer’s needs and requirements has always been a key to CGS ORIS’ success”, Andreas Kämmerer, Chief Operating Officer of CGS ORIS comments.