How RAPS Spiced Up the German Butcher's Trade : Introduction of Digital Services to a Non-Digital Industry

Title data

Glismann, Karsten ; Jöhnk, Jan ; Kratsch, Wolfgang ; Nüske, Niclas ; Schmied, Fabian:
How RAPS Spiced Up the German Butcher's Trade : Introduction of Digital Services to a Non-Digital Industry.
In: Urbach, Nils ; Röglinger, Maximilian ; Alias, Rose Alinda ; Kautz, Karlheinz ; Saunders, Carol ; Wiener, Martin (ed.): Digitalization Cases. Vol. 2. - Cham : Springer , 2021 . - pp. 183-201
ISBN 978-3-030-80003-1
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-80003-1_10

Project information

Abstract in another language

RAPS is a German spice manufacturer offering a variety of top quality products to customers worldwide. Organized in three business segments, RAPS supplies large companies in the food production sector, caterers and restaurants, as well as the butcher’s trade and food retail sector. Especially customers in the butcher’s trade face current challenges jeopardizing RAPS’ comfortable position as one of the market leaders in Germany. Strong market consolidation, changing customer requirements, differentiation from the food retail sector, and increasing regulatory requirements are but a few examples. Addressing these challenges, RAPS pursued the following project mission: Leveraging digitalization’s potential to expand RAPS’ value proposition, to differentiate from competitors, and to increase market share in the butcher’s trade. In a joint project with the Project Group Business & Information Systems Engineering of the Fraunhofer FIT, RAPS devised, developed, and launched new digital services that specifically address the main challenges of the butcher’s trade. In a customer-centric approach, butchers were included in the entire process. Starting with the identification of pain points, they tested and evaluated concepts and prototypes in various developmental stages. The new digital services, subsumed under the platform-independent application ‘myRAzept’, now support hundreds of RAPS customers in a formerly rather non-digital industry regarding food information labeling, recipe management and planning, as well as order management. The project team achieved several notable results: By providing an intuitive and useful platform-independent web application, RAPS expanded its service portfolio for an important group of customers. The image of RAPS as an innovative company was improved. The project did not only delight customers and externals stakeholders, but also the employees of RAPS. Due to the positive spirit engendered by the project, the collaboration between different parts of the company was further improved. Additionally, the project’s scope matches perfectly with the efforts of the Adalbert-Raps-Stiftung as a charitable foundation and silent partner of RAPS. The project revealed a variety of lessons learned that might help others when implementing digitalization projects in SMEs, , especially in the food industry. When introducing digital services to a traditional non-digital industry, the digital readiness of the potential users must be considered. Incumbents’ value propositions regarding quality in the physical world need to be transferred to digital services to maintain customer trust. Thereby, the integration of customers’ opinions, wishes, and requests is extremely valuable. Further, providing digital services to customers requires the development of digital capabilities within the company.