So thanks for being here and joining us for our journey to content at scale and content harmonization. My name is Karina Ackerman. I'm Global Digital Marketing Manager at EMI. And for those of you who might not know EMI, it's a Swiss dairy company with brands behind like Kaffee Latte or Kalpacht cheese. So I hope some of you, at least yesterday, got a cold coffee or matcha from us and enjoyed it. So a few years ago at EMI Digital, we looked at our landscape and realized that it's time for a transformation because our biggest strength, our brand diversity, actually started to become a challenge. And for that, we looked out to a partner, and I was very happy to find Nina and Merkel to join us on this journey. Thank you, Karina. And good morning also from my side. We are super happy to see so many faces here today on that beautiful and hot day in Basel. Love the term heat hangover, by the way, Simi. Gotta dab that. So my name is Nina Lozer, or loser. You can choose whatever pronunciation suits you best. I just want to add, this is nothing about my work performance or stage performance. Just to set that clear. So I am a senior account manager for CPG and retail clients at Merkel. And that's the wrong direction. For those who are not so familiar with Merkel, we are a global transformation partner working with leading brands as part of the Danzu network across different industries. So our goal lies in designing, building, and continuously involving meaningful customer experiences. And to do that, we usually combine data, technology, experience, and strategy. So whether it's about building new platforms, or implementing new customer journeys, or simply enabling teams to work more efficiently, our goal is always the same. To provide meaningful solutions that create real business impact and long-term scalability. And that's actually exactly the context we were able to support ME in. So over the past four years, I have had the pleasure to support ME within their digital journey. So Karina and I are very excited to share with you today some of our key learnings and highlights through that collaboration. But before we dive into the solution we developed together, it's actually worth having a look at how ME developed from being a dairy cooperative to becoming a global brand. And also touch on the challenges that came with that transformation. So let me take you on our journey. So ME was actually founded in 1907 by 62 farmers who wanted to work together and decide on how their milk products are produced. And today we're actually in 60 countries available around the world, are at nearly 5 billion revenue, and have over 13,000 employees. So it's important for you to know that we didn't grow by central design, but actually by acquisition. This is very important for the scale that you will see later what we worked on. So acquisition meant market by market, brand by brand, and every brand brought its own way of doing things. If we look at this on a slide, what that meant for us in digital, it was like over 90 websites, over 380 digital touch points spreaded around the world. And what looks impressive on a slide actually became quite a challenge for us. So the story started to turn a bit, and our strength of brand diversity started to become a cost for us. So what did it mean? So 90 brands actually meant 90 CMS entities, 90 different hosting setups, and almost 90 agency contracts. So we didn't have any shared infrastructure, no shared security standards, and actually no templates that could be shared. So in fact, even the smallest content change normally meant that an agency started to support a brand somewhere. So this then, of course, came with a lot of challenges, and in fact, we had three key costs. It was the high cost in money overall, the security risk we had, and no governance at all. And this is the challenge we set up Merkle 2 to solve for us. So when Emi reached out to us, we were asking ourselves the overarching question, how do you actually harmonize a landscape of over 90 websites, which is obviously a lot. So we approached that challenge from three different key perspectives, being technology, experience, and content. And while each of these perspectives revealed a different problem, the problems were just described by Karina, they all at the same time pointed into the same direction and led to one unified solution. A centralized platform, a centralized platform, enabled by a scalable design system, and supported by content governance. Or in short, one platform, one system, scalable across all of the Emi brands. So at the core of the transformation I was just describing lies one central CMS, Magnolia. That means instead of managing a dozen systems, brands are now all operated within one unified system. So that enables teams across the world to work more efficiently and individually while still operating within that unified system. So content, workflow, and assets are now being managed centrally, which eliminates duplication and inefficiencies. But at the same time, and that was very important for Emi, it still gives us enough flexibility to adapt to different markets and brand requirements. So to enable true efficiency and multi-brand implementation, we introduced a shared set of templates and components, which cover around 80% of all current brand requirements. So only in very specific cases, we, or Karina and Julia, do allow individual extensions, but even then we try to make them reusable for others. So in simple terms, you could say, built-once, use everywhere. But of course, technology alone is not enough. So we also had the need for a consistent experience layer, and that's exactly why we introduced our themable style guide. So at its core, the themable style guide consists of around 50 standard website components. And whilst these components always remain the same structurally, they can be adapted visually to each brand. So that can happen through colors, typography, or also imagery. So this allows brands to keep their very own identity while still delivering a consistent experience. So it offers us exactly the flexibility that was needed in the case of Emi. So what we can see here is exactly what I just described. The system we were building consists of only a few core templates and around 50 components. And these are adapted to all of the Emi brands. So this enables teams to move way faster while still delivering a consistent experience layer. And as I already said, it still offers us enough flexibility to adapt to the brand identity. So centralizing everything into one CMS brings, of course, very tangible benefits. So first of all, it reduces publication and improves return on investment. Second of all, it enables enterprise security and compliance. Third, it enables collaboration across markets and different brands. And finally, it also dramatically accelerates time to market. So what we can see here is that for Emi, this was not just a technical decision, but more so a strategic shift towards more control, security, and scalability. But talking about results, it's also definitely worth having a look at where we stand with our project today. Yes, let's do that together. So as I said, this was really not just a technology project, but it was a whole transformation for us. And where we are after a bit more than five years, we have migrated over 60 websites. And no worries, I will not read out every brand or challenge you if you know one of them. But have a moment and look at it. I think this is what true harmonization looks like. But, of course, it's not done with one slide. And I know we're here from the business side, so we all like a bit of KPI. So I brought you the six key wins that we had throughout this project. I think in numbers, it's really great to see that we're now down for around 20,000 Swiss francs. We save per brand per year that we have migrated. This means like hosting costs, agency costs, all of that. And if you sum it up with like 60 brands, you see the case pays by itself. So I don't know why I bring the others. But here we are. So we have 60 brands now on one single CMS compared to the 90 brands on 90 CMS entities. And we're actually two product owners centrally who manage all of this. It's not about the content implementation there, but the whole system can be covered by two product owners. This means supporting migration processes, keeping the maintenance, take care of further development and security. So we did the big Magnolia update because we needed a lot of time to migrate. And then we missed some versions. So we had a big update beginning of this year. And we were able to cover this, the two of us. So there was actually no big testing for all the brands. So they really just can focus on content creation out in the market. Then we have improved a lot our time to go live. We're now from a kickoff meeting with a brand that we will migrate to go live. We're in five weeks done. And we implemented a security standard. So ME has its standard for all the systems that we have. And we're actually one of the secure system in the whole ME IT landscape. And we landed 95% to 100% every month, which is a huge success and gives us also support in going on with that project. And then what is really important is that we kept the diversity of the brands. Even if it sounded a lot like standards, we kept it because we designed it from the beginning to still give individuality, but still also keep the costs low. So we do a design and implementation of the design for around 15,000 Swiss francs per brand. But, of course, we also had a learning journey. And the biggest learning is that this never was and is not a technology project, but a human project. So if you think of, like, how ME is built, we have, like, really diverse digital maturities in our brands and markets. They have competing priorities and they have low budget. So it needs a lot of change management training, talking to the markets and building the trust into the system and keep on going. So that's not something technology can solve, but people can solve. And it's the winning story of ME. It's the people behind. But I'm sure, Nina, you also have some learnings after this five, six years of working together. Absolutely. So what we've seen today is how reducing complexity can enable true scalability. So through centralizing technology, standardizing design, and structuring content, ME was able to transform their highly fragmented landscape into one unified system. And that created real impact. Not just technically, but as Karina was just saying, also about teams, markets, and processes. So our joint journey started over seven years ago. And today we are able to tackle such challenges even more faster and efficient by adding additional accelerators such as, for example, Merkle's very own platform framework, ARC, or more automated governance models. But what's very important is the core principle still stays the same. So true scalability doesn't come from adding more. It comes from simplifying and standardizing the system. And with that beautiful sentence, we will now move into our Q&A section for every question you might have. Karina and I will also be around during the day, so feel free to approach us. We also have some of our development team members here for any deeper technical questions that might arise. But we are, of course, happy to answer everything that came up. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. There we go. Perfect. Thank you both. Can you still hear? Yeah. Thank you both very much for that. It was really insightful. But before I keep talking, do we have any questions from the room? Oh, sorry. Oh, yeah. One in front of you, Sammy. I saw you as well. Regarding your standardization across all these different sites, obviously the design systems are pretty templatized. Can you talk a little bit about the creative development process and how you might have done some standardization as to how the content gets created before it starts to be implemented online? So when we talk about the creative and design process first, so we, of course, have also behind with Merkle a standardized Figma template. So actually the brand get the briefing. They can give the logo, a faith icon, and six colors. And then we adjust. We call it skinning it that way. So this is the space to get also the fonts, of course, because that's important for them. And then to be very honest, when it comes to content creation, most of the time, and here it's important to know that a lot of our brands are more producing and then in retail rather than really B2C brands where they sell. So they don't have that much content or resources there. So most of the time we first copy-paste, remove a bit, and then take it from there if we can support them with some content strategy. But the core is really get it in the system, get the security, get the standard. Perfect. Thank you very much. And, Sebi, I think there was one behind you a second ago. Perfect. Hi, Anna here. So you were showing our centralized design system, and you were also mentioning that you want to make sure that it's flexible enough so you can reflect different brands' identity. And how does it come together with ensuring web accessibility standards and stuff like color contrasts? From the perspective of my company, we do see a challenge in that. Sometimes individual brand teams, when they put their look and feel into the centralized design system, it's not meeting the standards anymore. So I wonder if you have some learnings to share about that. I mean, that is, of course, always something that can happen because, like we said, every brand has its very individual requirements, which we are trying to meet the best way possible. But, of course, you also have, like Karina was just saying, like an experienced designer within our team who is making sure that all the accessibility topics are being met. So sometimes we need to put a stop at individual wishes, even with, like, personalizing the components. So that's also why we go through the skinning process Karina was just describing. And we have multiple touch points until the brand is done being migrated and does go live. And maybe to add, when I mentioned at the end that this needs a lot of change management and trust. So this project was, from the beginning, supported by the board. And I showed a bit, like, the divisions. You saw it back. So we have a head of division for each of these, like, say, Americas. And they support the project also in a way that if we have challenge, they tell the brands that they have to migrate. And so we have the back power to say, like, it's okay if this is your, like, CICD. But for web, we need to go a bit darker, a bit brighter, and can ensure that we stay accessible. Perfect. Thank you both very much. I think we've got time for one more if there's any other hands. Nope. Okay. Well, thank you, Karina. Thank you, Nina. Thank you very much. And obviously, ask them any questions you want. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.