Europe's leading service platform
Swiss journalist Daniela Lager welcomed the audience and the two managing directors of Markant AG, Dominik Scheid, and Markant Syntrade Schweiz AG, Jos Lanen. The now firmly established event started as usual with an interview with the two managing directors, who looked back on the last year and talked about Markant's goals in the international context.
Despite the tense situation due to the past pandemic years, the ongoing war in Ukraine and the inflationary situation in Europe, Markant Group was able to grow internationally by 9% (2023) thanks to its many strong partners and also gain new partners in retail and industry and launch new services. "I see great opportunities for business development in the future," says Dominik Scheid.
The inflation trend is also clearly noticeable in Switzerland and has an impact on consumers' shopping behaviour. "We see growth of about 10 percent in the first half of 2023 in shopping tourism (source: Swiss Retail Federation) and the consumer is paying more and more attention to prices when shopping; discount stores, private labels and promotions are on the rise," Jos Lanen emphasises.
In order to continue being so successful, Markant's service portfolio is constantly being developed. In particular, services relating to all aspects of data management will gain in importance here in the future. "The drive to increase efficiency is noticeable everywhere – among manufacturers and in retail," Lanen reports and gave an overview of the most important service developments in the areas of EDI, Price Monitor and Cyber Security. Due to the further progress of digitalisation, the upcoming GDSN rollout as well as the new full service for the LkSG (Germany: Supply Chain Sourcing Obligations Act / Switzerland: Group Responsibility Initiative) are also of great importance for Markant.
The Markant Business Platform was launched in August 2023 to offer all these and other services to customers who are not suppliers and retailers. "It is one of the largest projects in Markant's history and enables us to now make the service offering available to third-party customers," Scheid informed. "Our vision: future through cooperation. We want to become the leading digital B2B service platform in the FMCG & DIY industry. We already have the industry's largest and strongest network in Europe."
Daniela Lager and Jos Lanen thanked the speakers for their top-class presentations and invited the participants of the Information Day to have a final lunch together: "We are looking forward to seeing you again at the 14th Information Day on 2 October 2024."
