Integrated solutions for a complex marketplace

As Sonopress celebrates its 50th anniversary and forges ahead with a new identity, SVEN DEUTSCHMANN, CEO of arvato digital services Manufacturing EMEA, spells out the company’s expanding services portfolio and forward strategy to cope with a complex marketplace.

Founded on 18 April 1958, Sonopress has developed over five decades into one of the world’s leading media service providers. Since the beginning of this year, sonopress has been operating under the new name arvato digital services at its worldwide production sites in Asia, Australia and North- and South America.

Due to the 50th anniversary of its headquarter in Gütersloh in April, sonopress Europe has only changed names then. Replication and the entire data carrier replication service chain will remain an important part of arvato digital services’ portfolio in the future, but there will be many more services on offer.

Blu-ray

We have just invested in a new Blu-ray line for our Gütersloh facility, being the second site within the group after the production plant in the United States. The new machine can produce Blu-ray discs with a storage capacity of up to 50 gigabytes. We have already produced over 1.5 million of high-resolution discs since its introduction. We start with one Blu-ray line in Gütersloh and will soon increase capacities along with growing customer demand.

We are ready for the high-resolution market and anticipate an extremely dynamic volume growth in Europe. arvato digital services has recently produced the first dual-layer Blu-ray Disc (BD50) for long-time customer splendid medien. The disc ‘In the Name of the King’ was developed by Enteractive Studios in Hamburg, Germany.

360° solutions

At the end of last year, the arvato AG restructured its storage media and service business and has created a new division, arvato digital services, under the management of arvato AG executive board member Hans-Peter Hülskötter.

In line with arvato’s strategy of offering integrated solutions to customers all over the world, the new division’s service chain will cover replication, fulfillment, distribution/supply chain management, financial services and electronic content distribution. This entire process chain is supported by end-to-end IT systems.
The new strategy corresponds to the requirements of international customers in the Video, Audio, Games and IT/Technology sectors to increasingly buy integrated service packages. We promote our service chain with the slogan 360° solutions for a digital world.

E-commerce

E-commerce has become an increasingly important channel of distribution, especially for the Consumer Electronics Industry. In 2006, e-commerce was growing at a rate of about 35% with a total turnover of over €100 billion in Europe. To be successful in the e-commerce channel it is essential to have an integrated solution for customer service, IT, logistics and financial services because these fields often generate the highest costs.

arvato digital services offers a complete and integrated e-commerce solution. We develop your online shop system (front-end & back-end) and manage the end-to-end fulfillment process to your customer (B2B, B2C) for both physical and digital distribution.

To succeed in the highly competitive and globalized high-tech and media market, the supply chain needs to support multiple channels. Whether you need to distribute high volumes to retailers and distributors or smaller shipments to end-consumers, arvato digital services handles the entire range from FTL, LTL, down to parcel shipments. Numerous services tailored to the customers’ needs guarantee the highest level of functionality and problem-free processing.

Moreover, arvato digital services supports clients and engineers throughout Europe with reliable after sales services by offering a warehouse, logistics and repair network in Europe, and a worldwide transportation network monitored by an integrated SAP-based IT system. With this solution, arvato digital services has succeeded in achieving the following results for their customers: reduction in transportation and overall process costs, reduction in inventory, enhanced service level (later cut-off times & shorter turn around times) and increased process transparency.

Our customer care solutions keep our customers connected with their customers in the most cost effective way. Drawing on our decades of experience and technological capabilities, we offer all channels of communication, thereby reducing the cost of interactions while extending convenience, choice, and service quality to the clients.

Media Browser Network

As one of the world’s leading media service providers, we offer a lot more innovative services related to digital products. With Media Browser Network, arvato digital services provides retailers and retail chains in over 15 European countries with promotional multimedia services at the point of sale.

Media Browser touchscreen terminals installed at sales shelves serve as shopping advisors by making it possible to easily browse through music, films, games and audio books on a multimedia, interactive platform. Barcodes of sealed packages can be read by built-in scanners without having to open the package, offering customers direct access to the product’s media content. Moreover, with the goal of providing optimal product guidance at the point of sale, arvato digital services is increasingly making this service available for printing cartridges and other products in retail stores.

Media Unic

Media Unic, arvato digital services’ in-store TV, is another innovative service providing multimedia communication with customers at the point of sale. Retailers’ own services, ad content and up-to-date entertainment can be organized either centrally or in a decentralized setup, allowing maximum topicality and flexibility for retailers. Media Unic creates an attractive purchasing atmosphere, promoting sales at the point of sale while facilitating new modes of targeted customer marketing for retailers.

The systems are based on the media service which is networked online, guaranteeing the availability of the technical system as well as the Media Browser and Media Unic databases, with more than 8 million media trailers updated daily in over fifteen European countries.

mbargo

Furthermore, with mbargo, arvato digital services has developed an initiative to counteract Internet piracy, being one of the biggest threats to companies whose revenue is based on digital media products.

The blessings of digital media go hand in hand with the curse of one-to-one pirate copies and their widespread distribution on Internet file sharing platforms. One single unlicensed copy is enough to provide a product to millions of other users free of charge, which does massive damage to the copyright holder. With increasingly faster broadband connections, Internet file sharing platforms continue to be very popular. These days, with software that is becoming easier and easier to use, even inexperienced users can download any content from file sharing platforms.

However, it is no longer just music and games that are swapped on a large scale on the file sharing platforms. Even films in HD quality and expensive special software are offered and downloaded by the thousands – in many cases even before the official publishing date.
mbargo protects the products of our customers. With it arvato digital services has a service for all content providers who want better protection for their intellectual property against piracy on the Internet. mbargo provides an effective solution to widespread unlicensed distribution of copyright-protected products on file sharing platforms. Regardless of whether the products are music, films, games or software. Even before the scheduled publication of a title, mbargo will constantly monitor the file sharing platforms in question.

As soon as the first unlicensed copies are discovered, active mbargo protection starts. The mbargo technology specifically prevents further downloading of these files and curbs any further distribution. Apart from protecting products, mbargo can quantify the level of piracy. What is more, with the mbargo service, paying customers are protected.

Towards integrated solutions

When asked, what the biggest changes and challenges are in the replication world in these days, I would answer that many customers demand integrated solutions, including every step of the value chain.

The solutions that arvato digital services offers create value for the customers and ensure that they are well equipped for the challenges of their markets. In addition, many clients require a global network for their international product releases. And especially in this regard, we are well positioned and present on all five continents with production sites in 18 countries.

For us, market consolidation and price pressure are still very dominant issues. However, despite of all the innovate digital services we offer, a great deal of our turnover is still from the replication of digital data carriers. By the way, we have just produced the six billionth data carrier at arvato digital services in Gütersloh!...

Article Comments

comments powered by Disqus