Schawk! BLUE Users Conference Draws Industry Leaders

CHICAGO, Oct. 21, 2014 /PRNewswire/ -- Schawk!, a leading global brand deployment company that produces and protects brand assets to drive brand profitability, concluded its BLUE^TM Users Conference September 22-23, 2014, at The Blackstone Hotel and Venue Six10 in Chicago, IL.

The conference, whose theme was Accelerating Brand Performance, enabled users of BLUE, Schawk's robust enterprise-level SaaS (software as a service) platform, to share user best practices across industries and disciplines, gain insights from forward-thinking keynote speakers, preview new product features and a blueprint for future enhancements.

Leadership-level BLUE users from global consumer products companies, pharmaceutical and life sciences companies gained first-hand insight from top BLUE users, success stories by industry leaders, and live demonstrations of the features of the upcoming BLUE 3.6 release – an exclusive opportunity to discover new ways to use BLUE to accelerate brand performance.

Company delegates from Bayer HealthCare, Campbell Soup Company, ConAgra Foods, Elanco, Eli Lilly and Company, Merck, PepsiCo, Premier Nutrition Corporation, Revlon, Shire, Unilever, and Takeda Pharmaceuticals also experienced live demos of the BLUE 3.6 New Features: Text Compare Module, Business Intelligence Functions, Improved User Experience, Copy Management Improvements, and Online Proofing in HTML5.

User Case Studies were shared by BLUE champions and pioneers in the field of artwork and workflow management technology. Deborah Ptalis, Revlon's senior manager, creative project management presented Revlon + BLUE: 7 Years. Chris Miller, Shire's business systems analyst presented Shire's BLUE Connection: a Powerful Integration with SAP. Jeff Burnham, ConAgra Foods' director, brand design presented Driving Continuous Improvement. Andy McArdle, Merck's director, IT presented Building a Foundation for Future Business Growth.

Keynote Speakers included Stephen Kaufman, chief technology officer at SGK, who presented The Inherent Power of Inheritance and Ron Brown, former senior director CIO at PepsiCo Global R&D, who presented Change is the New Constant. Viktorija Gnatoka, global packaging analyst, at market intelligence giant, Mintel, completed the team of keynote speakers, presenting Bridging the Innovation Gap.

Deborah Ptalis, senior manager, creative project management for Revlon commented: "With 45,000 files in our BLUE Asset Library and over 1,200 changes a year, we needed a way to be able to manage and quickly find what we were looking for. We accomplished this using metadata. Every file has metadata associated to it and that enables us to find what we're looking for with just a few clicks."

"We believe that there's great value to providing an organized forum where users of BLUE can meet and share their product experiences with their counterparts at other companies. It also gives them the opportunity to share their insights with Schawk about their constantly evolving business challenges and how BLUE can evolve to help them accelerate brand performance," said Scott Strong, senior vice president, group managing director of Schawk Digital Solutions.

Chris Miller, business systems analyst, for Shire added: "After completing our BLUE integration with SAP, both the Artwork and Planning groups have much greater visibility into the product artwork lifecycle, which has helped ensure more timely implementation of changes. Everyone at Schawk Digital Solutions, particularly the Customization and Project Management teams, stepped up to ensure the project went live on time."

Amy Languell, commercialization project coordinator, for Premier Nutrition Corporation concluded: "Schawk doesn't just provide software, but a partnership with the goal of greater business success."

Schawk Digital Solutions operates within the marketing eco-system to help global CPG, Retail and Life Sciences clients accelerate brand performance by delivering global visibility and insight into the business processes that drive the execution and management of their brands efficiently across media worldwide. We do this through the continuous development, reinvestment and deployment of BLUE, our robust enterprise-level software as a service (SaaS) platform. BLUE has been deployed to more than 78,000 users worldwide.

Schawk! produces brand assets and protects brand equities to drive brand profitability. Leveraging its 60+ years of industry leadership, Schawk! identifies and deploys scalable solutions to address a brand's complex production and delivery needs through proven expertise in workflow, resourcing, color management and imaging. Schawk! is part of the brand deployment group of SGK. SGK is a division of Matthews International Corporation (NASDAQ GSM: MATW). For more information visit: http://www.schawk.com

BLUE is a cloud-based software platform that delivers a set of global capabilities to help brand-driven organizations control and manage brand development and brand deployment assets and activities to drive brand performance. BLUE is a product of SGK. For more information visit: http://www.bluesoftware.com

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SOURCE Schawk!