Ascensia Diabetes Care overcomes rebranding challenges

This medical device company spins off from Bayer, employing PLM and ERP software on a global scale that helps it meet regulatory demands.

The rebranding from Bayer to Ascensia affected multiple products sold in countries worldwide.
The rebranding from Bayer to Ascensia affected multiple products sold in countries worldwide.

Dedicated to improving the health and lives of people with diabetes, Ascensia Diabetes Care is known for its CONTOUR™ range of blood-glucose monitoring systems.

One of the latest Contour products is the Bluetooth-enabled CONTOUR NEXT ONE, which connects the CONTOUR Diabetes app in a smartphone. The app allows the person to track their blood glucose values, and record what they’ve eaten or how they’ve exercised.

Headquartered in Basel, Switzerland, and in Parsippany, NJ in the U.S. Ascensia was created when Bayer AG sold its 70-year-old diabetes care business to PHC Holdings (formerly known as Panasonic Healthcare Holdings) in 2016.

When a company with a new name is formed out of a leading brand, transferring and integrating the huge amount of data involved represents a significant challenge. Yet the exercise can also provide an opportunity to upgrade information management systems in ways that make future product and business decision-making more effective.

That was the experience for Ascensia, which retained many of the former Bayer employees. “We knew the product, it was just handling the transition we needed help with,” says Chris Pasternak, Ascensia’s Manager of Engineering Systems. “When we first launched, we said, ‘Let’s look at this as a very large startup.’ Bayer is a great company with a lot of irons in the fire. Now, for us as Ascensia, to be able to focus solely on the diabetes industry and develop more and better products is very exciting.”

Managing “old” into “new” on a global scale

Yet that excitement was tempered by the need to separate entirely from Bayer’s existing SAP enterprise resource planning (ERP) software system. All relevant legacy data had to be extracted by a certain deadline. New ERP and product lifecycle management (PLM) systems needed to be configured and integrated with each other. And everything required a rebranding from Bayer to Ascensia that would affect multiple products, sold in countries around the world, with customized packaging in many different languages.

“We had both legal and time constraints on getting it done in about 18 months,” Pasternak notes.

To better understand the complexity of the groundwork involved in the project, consider a single Ascensia blood-glucose monitor: the compact, hand-held device comes individually packaged and is shipped in large lots. Accompanying supplies include the lancets for the finger-stick that draws the patient’s blood, and the test strips that go into the meter to register blood-sugar levels.

Ascensia packages digital monitors, needles and test strips at locations worldwide. Retail meter kit products are typically sold in paperboard cartons that contain clear plastic bags that hold needles or test strips. Further packaging details were not available.

Once Ascensia was created, the company had to start the process to replace all existing blood-glucose monitors and associated hardware that included the Bayer name and branding with versions bearing the new company logo, as well as redesign artwork, labeling and packaging.

Designs, marketing plans and manufacturing guidelines all needed to be created, approved and executed by the agreed deadline for removing all Bayer branding.

“Every component that went into every country had to be touched,” says Pasternak. “Even the needles on our lancets had to be redesigned because they all had the Bayer cross emblem on them. Back when we were Bayer we wanted to make sure that brand was on everything—but in this new situation it had to come off everything.”

To manage the project from both a product and a financial system standpoint, Ascensia had to process a massive number of change orders to track all the redesign work, produce and distribute all the new product versions to their proper destinations, and keep the overall task flow of the business running smoothly throughout.

Conveying Innovations Report
Editors report on distinguishing characteristics that define each new product and collected video demonstrating the equipment or materials as displayed at the show. This topical report, winnowed from nearly 300 PACK EXPO collective booth visits, represents a categorized, organized account of individual items that were selected based on whether they were deemed to be both new, and truly innovative, based on decades of combined editorial experience in experiencing and evaluating PACK EXPO products.
Take me there
Conveying Innovations Report
Annual Outlook Report: Workforce
Hiring remains a major challenge in packaging, with 78% struggling to fill unskilled roles and 84% lacking experienced workers. As automation grows, companies must rethink hiring and training. Download the full report for key insights.
Download Now
Annual Outlook Report: Workforce