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How the Encodify platform transformed marketing into a powerful engine and prompted the rest of the organisation to onboard as well.
Agro Sevilla produces more than 80 million kilos of olives every year, and they all need to packaged and marketed before they make it to the shelves.. The task of creating marketing collateral for the Agro Sevilla olives falls on 35 employees at the Agro Sevilla headquarters in Sevilla, who collaboreate to create, adjust, review, and amend every asset.
We sat down with Finbarr González O’Sullivan, who is the marketing manager for Agro Sevilla, to talk about why they ended up choosing Encodify. Finbarr has been with the company for 20 years and is integral to Agro Sevilla’s digital transformation.
"The workflows that we had before Encodify were based on emails and attached PDF files. Mailboxes were full. One PDF would evolve into 25 different versions. Some people would work on version 23, and others worked on version 25. Mistakes were simply part of the workflow routine."—Finbarr González O’Sullivan, Marketing Manager at Agro Sevilla
When performing quality control, Agro Sevilla used to see errors in up to 20% of their assets.
The vision at Agro Sevilla was always to upgrade the technology portfolio to stay competitive. However, before Encodify, Finbarr explains that the majority of the work was managed on the fly: “Back then, it was only the packaging and trade shows. We had no system. We gave instructions to print houses and provided either physical drawings or DVDs. It involved a lot of work. We moved on to emails and PDF files. But it wasn’t a system.“
The main challenge, as Finbar explain, was collaboration. Before implementing Encodify, they would regularly see errors pop up during reviews and revisions as one employee would be working on improving version 23 of an asset, while another would be working on improving version 25. This meant that mistakes ended up as a regular occurrence, and not just for marketing assets, for packaging too.
The packaging process is a critical component of Agro Sevilla’s business model and to the olive export industry in general. It is the primary process when exporting to over 70 countries. Moreover, labelling is an essential part of the process. Errors in label descriptions are costly, especially since olives, like most other food products, are subject to strict legal requirements and regular quality control.
“Mistakes were widespread at various stages. It was impossible to have an overview of the packaging development. That is when we started to look for a system to help us digitise and create a better overview.” Finbarr says.
So to alleviate this, Agro Sevilla began looking for a new system, and eventually they settled on the Encodify platform.
"We chose Encodify because it was the tool that adapted best to our workflows. With the other solutions, we had to adapt to their workflows."—Finbarr González O’Sullivan, Marketing Manager at Agro Sevilla
Implementing an end-to-end workflow that covers more than 70 countries is a significant investment in labelling, translation services, and ensuring compliance with local laws, but before implementing Encodify, Agro Sevilla used to see errors in up to 20% of their assets when they carried out quality control. This is now down to 0% and as a result, what began as a an effort to to streamline the marketing and packaging process has quickly spread throughout the organization.
Since implementation Agro Sevilla has expanded the Encodify solution to also cover other marketing activities like flyers, catalogues, and banners. And afterwards other departments started requesting similar solutions, and today, the Encodify platform is used by both marketing, sales, quality assurance, warehouses, purchasing, and product development.
“All of the colleagues who use Encodify know where things are. They can see the projects. They are all very fluent with the dashboards. They don’t need to send us emails. They don’t need to ask us if we are on schedule with the deadline. They can see it,” Finbarr explains.
Today, Agro Sevilla has implemented the platform as a real-time workflow platform stretching aross the organization.
When asked to summarize the change that Agro Sevilla has experienced since implementing the Encodify solution, Finbarr González O’Sullivan described it like this: "There was this natural human reluctance to change. It was a bit like the first time you to jump off a cliff, and you think, I’ll do it later. But we had the vision. And a few weeks after we started, there was no going back.”
The implementation of the Encodify solution has improved workflows considerably, and the results are telling:
"Encodify has given us so much power. An engine. The marketing engine has become so much more powerful without adding extra elements. And it has allowed us to expand into other departments quickly. For us, it is a strategic asset. Not working with Encodify would imply a backward revolution."—Finbarr González O’Sullivan, Marketing Manager at Agro Sevilla
Agro Sevilla is the world’s largest olive producer, packer, and exporterAgro Sevilla was founded as a cooperative society in 1977. It is the world’s largest olive producer, packer, and exporter and one of Spain’s major olive oil exporters. They manufacture private label and retail products for restaurants, retail, and the food service industry within 70 countries. Agro Sevilla’s olives are grown by 4000 farmers in the heart of Andalucia. Every farmer is a member of Agro Sevilla’s cooperative farming society, and as a cooperative, the farmers produce an incredible 80.000 tonnes of olives per year.
