How Norseland Simplified Their Approval Processes with Share and Approve

Norseland is a wholly-owned subsidiary of TINE SA in Norway and produces a variety of cheeses that are sold to local supermarkets and exported to 18 different countries. In addition to managing their own five brands, they work
with private label brands and resellers.

Since they work with such a variety of products and markets, Norseland is responsible for managing artwork for 400 – 450 SKUs. Since many of their products are the same, just packed differently, there is potential for confusion around the many different artworks they need to manage.

Norseland employs 240 full time employees and works with one primary design agency. The design agency does the edits for their many artwork versions and updates. These edits often required very detailed and specific requirements, so they need to be carefully checked for approval.

A challenge for the Norseland team was managing these edits through emails, which added up to very full inboxes very quickly. This meant that the process for creating and updating artwork had to be tracked through cluttered inboxes; there wasn’t a single source to manage the approval cycle.

Another challenge was knowing where the most current version of the artwork resided. With a few different versions going around through email, there was no way to know which was the most current. They also couldn’t see the history of where and when the artwork had changed. It was tricky to know if the artwork was approved or was stuck in someone’s email inbox.

“There was no way to know if everyone who was required to approve a file had actually approved it,” says Harwood. “We had a document management system, but it didn’t fit our needs for the artwork approval process.”

Norseland started looking for a solution that could meet their needs out-of-the-box, but that also had the potential to be
configured to grow and change with the company. Since they were already using Cape Pack palletization software from Esko, they started looking at the approval software from Esko called Share and Approve. They wanted to start with the basics, so they started a trial of Share and Approve and were hooked.

Now, each approver is informed only when the artwork is ready for their specific stage of approval, so they are not receiving any unnecessary emails about it before it’s their turn to take action. Share and Approve has taken out the complexity for many of the users, and most of the Norseland team has been able to use it without any training.

Norseland has realized many benefits of using Share and Approve to simplify their artwork approval process.

1. Increased Version Control: Norseland knows where to go for the latest version of their artwork, can tell if all the approvers have seen the artwork, and trace any changes that were made at any time.
2. Reduced Errors: because the approval process has improved, Norseland has saved £35K by stopping artwork with errors from going to print.
3. Improved Productivity: The workload has improved since everyone knows where to go for approvals; they don’t have to search through their emails. Knowing that there is a single source in place, approvers trust that their feedback will be received and acted upon.
4. Saved Time: Approvers can now work their approval tasks into their schedules rather than planning around other schedules. If someone goes on a
   holiday, they can review when they are able while others can review simultaneously or at a different time that works for them. No more approvals sitting in email inboxes for weeks.

“Our team is very keen to using the system, they are all very happy,” says Harwood. “I was pleasantly surprised to see that people were actively logging in and using the system before any training.”

Since it’s been so easy to use, Norseland is going to start involving their 3rd party suppliers so that they can see annotations or corrections and use the comments function in Share and Approve as well.

“If the team is happy, they will not to come to me with complaints. And they haven’t.” explains Harwood.

Want to learn more about how Share and Approve can work for your team? Check out the free trial here.