Cloud-based Smartflow supercharges your processes, promotes collaboration and increases speed to market: Gap Systems Ltd.

“Gap Systems is at the forefront of a real revolution in helping organizations manage their business processes far more effectively, simply and at lower cost."

Today, businesses are facing a massive change in the landscape, including regulatory changes, and continuous advancement in technology. These immense changes are making every organization think about the appropriate way to efficiently manage essential operational processes with visibility, flexibility, transparency, and control. Nowadays, for every business, getting the product into the market is quite a tough job and these organizations are actually looking for a best business process solution to keep them in the race.

To cope with this, Gap Systems was founded to help organizations work more efficiently. After identifying that most organizations have complex supply chains and getting products to market is often part art and part science, Gap Systems developed a powerful but simple to use web based solution, Smartflow, which streamlines the product development process.

In-conversation with Mr. Paul Goldberg, Founder & CEO

What learning helped you to set this company up?

When I founded Gap Systems, I had a background in Software Development and Packaging Lifecycle Management, which is quite an unusual and unique mix of skills. I understood very clearly where the pain points were in the product development processes and the packaging supply chain, but I also knew that organizations work very differently even if the end goal is the same. Having Software Development experience meant I could design a software solution to fit the business requirement and deliver unique new ways of working, which would deliver unprecedented value in the knowledge that clients would want and need to adapt the system to their ways of working once the advantages were clear.

What are the highlights of your organization?

• Our people: We have a visionary, motivated and dedicated team working with Smartflow and all our clients, caring passionately about their businesses and building new ways to deliver success for them in their markets.
• Our Smartflow mindset, vision & strategy: Packaging processes are changing and we are focused on developing the best product possible to support these changes. We understand our industry, and its needs. We are working to lead change in our sector by setting new working standards that deliver value and extensive benefits to our clients.
• Our client retention at over 98% is second to none: At Gap Systems the client is always king. We relentlessly push the boundaries to ensure our client partnerships are exceeding expectations, delivering on quality, services and value for money. Our clients appreciate the way we work and the value we deliver, so our client retention is second to none.
• “A list” of clients: We work with a number of world-renowned brands including AstraZeneca, Topco, Kao Brands, and BiC to name a few. We pride ourselves on delivering value across the board and the buy-in from brand leaders shows that we are on the right track. 

What do you feel are the reasons behind your product popularity?

Smartflow solves a big problem for our clients and supports change easily. Smartflow addresses their main operational and process needs, namely the requirement to speed up their product development lifecycle management and packaging goals, getting their products to market faster, easier, smarter and cheaper. As one of our clients memorably told us “we actually took our artwork approvals process from 39 days down to about 8 days.” Our clients are always impressed and inspired once they experience the benefits and results Smartflow delivers. Smartflow’s unique functionality and features allow our clients to create a solution that is specific to their needs.

What is the market for your product?

Food & Beverage manufacturers, Pharmaceuticals, Retailers and Global Consumer brands are our actual market. Initially our focus was in the packaging area of the Label & Artwork Management (LAM) market, where there is an increasing demand to bring products to market faster, with leaner and more automated operations. But the potential is enormous. The Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) and New Product Development (NPD) markets are set for huge growth. The global PLM market alone is forecast to grow from $40.26 billion in 2014 to $75.87 billion in 2022.

Gap Systems is ideally placed to service both the PLM and NPD markets since much of the Smartflow functionality required to fully penetrate these mainstream markets is already in place and a number of clients are already using the software for these activities.

How have you expanded your company and its offerings over the years?

When we embarked on our journey with Smartflow, we had a long-term view of where we believed the market was going and we therefore started development with a 5-10 year vision. This strategy has proven very successful for us as it has really allowed us to take clients on a journey from managing single stages of marketing and packaging product development linked to options such as the artwork approvals all the way through to more complex full product lifecycle management. Smartflow’s modular approach is a key reason why many of our clients keep expanding their use of their Smartflow solution.

We are in the process of rolling out our latest Smartflow release which showcases our exciting new UI. The feedback from clients is phenomenal. For us, the entire client experience matters - it’s not just about providing strong process management, but creating a tool that is straightforward and a pleasure to use.

Knowing the Founder & CEO

Paul Goldberg is the Founder & CEO of GAP Systems Ltd. Having worked in both enterprise software and the packaging industries, Paul founded Gap Systems to address a clear and emerging need for FMCG brands, retailers and pharmaceutical organizations to simplify their product lifecycle processes. He aimed to make them faster, smarter and more cost effective with reduced errors by providing a SaaS-based digital tool kit to transform their business processes.