Kunert is a long-established company specializing in high quality legwear for women and men. In 2013,  the company was bought out and restructured by Austro Holding. Explore how Kunert optimizes the provision of content for cross-channel distribution with an efficient DAM system and improves its media workflows.

In the course of the restructuring, Kunert took a critical look at its IT landscape and asked themselves whether the old systems could still meet today's technological and process requirements. The result was sobering - it could not.

Since the intermediaries in particular develop their own communication measures based on the data from Kunert, it was of great importance to conduct a thorough examination of the IT infrastructure and the associated data. By doing this, it made it possible to determine who actually needed access to the data, in what form or formats it was required, and how it could be provided effectively.

Large retailers such as Galeria, Müller, Zalando or Amazon are responsible for 75% of sales, while 15% are generated via their own stores and 10% are achieved online. The central task was to provide retailers with the desired and required information in the appropriate specifications across all channels.

Focus on retail: core requirements

• Individual trade requirements: Merchants have different requirements regarding image display, background, size, etc. It is ensured that the images are generated specifically based on a source asset / file and therefore created for the different merchants, target platforms and marketplaces.
• Speed: Images are shared and published via Content Delivery Network (CDN). To speed up distribution, Cloudimage (a product of Scaleflex) automates the conversion and optimization of files.
• Versioning: Customers always automatically access the latest version of an image.

Important selection criteria: finding the right DAM system

The main goal of a DAM system is to efficiently manage, organize, and deliver digital assets such as images, 360-degree views of products, videos, audio files, documents, and other multimedia content.

When selecting a suitable DAM system, Kunert placed particular emphasis on the comprehensive handling of usage rights, especially with regard to images of people. Both data protection and licensing aspects play a decisive role here. For Kunert, it was of great importance to ensure that images could no longer be retrieved after a certain point in time.

Kunert uses Dynamics 365, Microsoft Business Central as its ERP system, which also functions as a Product Information Management system (PIM). This enables the connection of different platforms via a Data Hub. Through the interface connection, images, documents and videos based on SKU numbers can be integrated into the DAM system and made available for various output channels. When a customer requires data or images, a profile is created in the Data Hub and the required metadata and CDN links are generated. A significant improvement is that changes to assets, such as replacing an image, are automatically updated in the system. This means that an asset is updated only once in the DAM and simultaneously in all other places where it is automatically displayed or included.

Once the data is available or interfaces with previous content systems is established, they are optimized in the DAM system prior to publication in various channels such as print publications, social media activities or other measures.

This includes enriching new media with custom and automatic content tags to ensure easy retrieval and adding metadata to media files. Another benefit is that customers can filter and select and use products, including images, based on this metadata. AI-supported functions of the DAM system simplify one or the other work step, such as content moderation.

In addition, the DAM system performs tasks such as file conversion or transcoding of videos to ensure efficient and smooth processing of these files.

Seamless migration for a smooth transition

From a technical point of view, the high number of data is not the decisive criterion for migration. Rather, the process-related steps play an important role. One of the challenges to be solved internally was to first prepare the data and enrich it with clear criteria.

Due to the AI functions integrated in the DAM, Kunert is now able to upload hundreds of images together with the associated metadata at the same time and also make them available to customers.

Unlimited possibilities for print and packaging: Kunert meets customer expectations

Kunert's customers have diverse requirements in the area of print and packaging. Flyers, brochures, posters or packages - they all serve as important communication tools. That's why Kunert strives to offer its customers maximum flexibility by allowing them to print the desired areas with appealing images.