VERFORA

VERFORA is the market-leading provider of over-the-counter medicines in Switzerland – as a marketer for other manufacturers such as Procter & Gamble, but also with a portfolio of around 100 nationally recognized own brands such as Algifor and Merfen. VERFORA’s five marketing departments manage a total of more than 1,700 pharmaceuticals, health and beauty products, which are sold exclusively through specialist retailers, i.e. pharmacies, drugstores and therapy centers.

With Contentserv’s PIM solution, VERFORA was able to massively streamline its internal workflows and prove its market leadership in Switzerland, also with regard to digital transformation.

Before the introduction, there were no fixed standards for handling product data. The marketing departments either worked with a self-developed structure or without a clear system. A lot of information and assets were stored locally, were difficult to find or were lost over the years and sometimes had to be recreated several times. The new system should not only create a uniform standard for processes and data quality, but also a stable basis for further digitization and automation.

This step was therefore a major challenge, particularly in light of the company’s extremely complex system landscape. The requirements for the PIM solution were correspondingly high:

• Central storage and maintenance of all product information in the PIM
• Establishment of standardized processes that ensure efficiency and high data quality
• Intuitive search that allows users to retrieve the data they need with just three clicks
• Close integration with the SAP ERP system, which was introduced at the same time and acts as a «leading system»
• Direct connection to various web stores (initially within the Galenica Group, later also stores of partner companies)

Around 1,700 products are now maintained and enriched in the system – with clearly structured approval processes and the establishment of the PIM solution as a «single source of truth» guaranteeing a high level of quality. The new way of working means that product information can now be accessed in fragmented form, so that individual text modules, for example, can be used quickly and easily in a wide variety of contexts. How efficient and cost-saving the new way of working with the Contentserv solution is is also noticeable in the creation of advertising materials. For example, it used to take around two months to create the annual product brochure. Today, the PIM solution creates the product brochure fully automatically – within a single minute.

VERFORA continues to build on its impressive successes. After all, the system changeover is just the start of a far-reaching digitalization and automation strategy. The transformation has helped to expand VERFORA’s market leadership – not only in the market itself, but also in terms of how and at what technical level the company operates.

The solution was implemented for VERFORA by Stämpfli Kommunikation in 2020 and has been managed and further developed by aclevion since 2023.