Loacker is a 100-year-old manufacturer of premium wafers and chocolate specialties based in the Tyrol region of Northern Italy. Its wafers, biscuits and chocolate bars are enjoyed around the world, with international markets generating more than €488 million in annual turnover across 110 countries. In 2025, the company produced around 37,510 tons of wafers and continuously introduces new flavors and product variations to meet changing consumer tastes.
Product quality begins at the very start of the process, with carefully selected, high-quality ingredients and no added colors, flavorings, or preservatives. Loacker’s distinctive specialties are made using cocoa sourced from Ecuador and Côte d’Ivoire, 100 percent Italian hazelnuts, Bourbon vanilla from Madagascar, and Alpine milk.
All wafers are produced in Loacker’s own factories, also using machines and process adaptations designed and built by the company itself. This is supported by Loacker’s own milk powder facilities and coconut farming programs overseas, ensuring consistent access to high-quality raw materials and full control over product quality.
As a manufacturer, the company manages a highly complex value chain spanning sourcing, production and innovation. Coordinating raw materials, recipes, packaging and fast-paced research and development (R&D) activities requires clean, consistent and well-governed product data.
Challenges
A century of heritage data – and a record of innovation
Loacker’s long history of innovation has led to a highly complex data landscape. Over more than a century of operations, the company accumulated vast volumes of historical data across multiple systems supporting product information, regulatory content, packaging graphics, and supporting files. As a result, critical data was dispersed across ERP systems, spreadsheets, specialist tools and department-specific repositories. This made it increasingly difficult to coordinate innovation at scale.
Data sharing challenges
During the early stages of product development, data was managed within individual teams and only shared later as products moved toward production. This was further complicated by differing global requirements for packaging, ingredients and food regulations, as well as data stored in multiple formats, making consistent sharing and coordination difficult.
With many changes happening at the same time, keeping packaging and regulatory updates aligned became increasingly challenging. As a result, changes were implemented in small, disconnected steps rather than through a coordinated approach.
This lack of shared visibility meant teams were sometimes working with outdated information, which complicated everyday work. As a result, the company recognized the need for a new MDM solution that could connect teams across the business and support new ways of working.
“We are a traditional company, which means we have a lot of data spread across different systems, many spreadsheets and a great deal of knowledge held by our people. We also rely on various tools to collect, store, combine and calculate data. What makes Loacker unique is that we do almost everything in-house, from marketing to raw materials, which adds to the complexity we need to manage.” - Christian Eller, IT Business Partner, Loacker
To summarize, Loacker faced the following challenges:
- Product, packaging, regulatory and sustainability data was spread across multiple systems, spreadsheets and formats
- Siloed data limited visibility and impacted pace of innovation
- Teams sometimes worked with outdated information, impacting collaboration and reducing efficiency across R&D
Solution
Building a flexible foundation
Starting in 2017, Loacker implemented Stibo Systems’ master data management (MDM) platform to support the company’s product information management (PIM) needs.
“Flexibility was critical for us. We needed a single platform that could support a wide range of activities and replace the mix of ERP systems, spreadsheets and local tools we had relied on before. The first step was to have interfaces in place for three key markets: Germany, Italy and the USA.” - Lisa Burger, Head of Corporate Data Quality Management, A Loacker AG
Managing the full product development lifecycle in one place
Today, the new PIM solution supports data across the full product development lifecycle, including recipes, raw materials, packaging, storage, sensory and product testing, machine data, ecommerce and sales information, and finished products.
Making data relationships visible across teams
To make challenges visible and clearly demonstrate the value of the new PIM, the team introduced visualizations that showed how data was connected across the product development process. These views helped teams understand dependencies, responsibilities and how information flowed from early innovation through production.
“Having consistent, up-to-date data has made a real difference for our teams. A flexible, shared foundation for innovation, combined with clear visualization of data and responsibilities, helps our people see the bigger picture and feel more engaged.” - Christian Eller, IT Business Partner, Loacker
Supporting innovation with flexible workflows and automation
Loacker and Stibo Systems also designed flexible, modular innovation workflows that support a wide range of activities, from minor packaging and formulation changes to regulatory updates and full product development. Automated data readiness checks identified missing or incomplete data early and alerted teams accordingly. By mapping data dependencies, these checks also revealed where gaps were creating bottlenecks in the process.
Measurable efficiency gains
A key benefit for teams was the ability to start parallel workstreams using partial data, rather than waiting for all data to be complete. As a result, employee satisfaction improved across R&D, manufacturing, and packaging teams. Better cross-functional cooperation, shared data, and a common understanding of processes contributed to measurable efficiency gains. A real-world comparison of the old and new approaches showed average time savings of around 1,000 hours per innovation project, with additional gains from improved communication and collaboration.
“Giving teams a shared view of data transformed the way we work. Collaboration improved across R&D, production and packaging, employee satisfaction increased, and we now save around 1,000 hours per innovation project.” - Lisa Burger, Head of Corporate Data Quality Management, A Loacker AG
To summarize, Loacker achieved the following key benefits:
- Faster product development, with average time savings of around 1,000 hours per innovation project
- Parallel workstreams enabled, allowing teams to progress with partial data instead of waiting for full completion
- Higher employee satisfaction and productivity, driven by clearer processes and better collaboration
- Shared visibility into data relationships and responsibilities
- End-to-end management of the full product development lifecycle
- Early detection of data gaps through automated readiness checks
- A single, flexible product data foundation, replacing fragmented systems and spreadsheets
- A future-ready MDM platform, supporting scalability and new data-driven use cases
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Summary
A foundation for future data innovation
The team at Loacker found that involving people from the very beginning led to better results. By bringing employees in early, they became informed contributors, and their ideas directly influenced what was ultimately put in place.
Loacker is now looking to extend the benefits of its MDM solution even further. For example, the company plans to integrate sustainability and regulatory insights directly into its innovation process. This includes linking energy consumption data from manufacturing through shared identifiers, making it possible to clearly see how much energy is used to produce a wafer or chocolate bar from start to finish.
In addition, workflow and automation capabilities will be expanded to drive further efficiencies, while visualization tools within the MDM platform will be used more broadly across functional teams to strengthen collaboration and alignment.
