About dm-drogerie markt
dm is Germany’s highest-turnover drugstore with more than 60,300 employees across 2,100+ stores in Germany. Two million customers shop with dm daily.
Industry
Retail
Explore Filestage →Goals
- Eliminate delays
- Centralize feedback
- Increase visibility
Favorite features
- Threaded comments
- Attachments to comments
- Multi-file support
dm's journey in numbers
Five years of faster approvals. And still going strong.
Campaign clarity for over 2,100 stores across Germany.
Clear communication that helps millions of customers every day.
Running national marketing campaigns for over 2,100 stores is already a juggling act. Add collaboration with multiple agencies and internal teams into the mix, and things can get messy.
That’s exactly what was happening for Julia Wolf and the National Market Communication team at dm.
- Files bounced around in endless email threads
- SharePoint links broke or pointed to outdated versions
- People couldn’t always open the files they needed (and when they finally could, they couldn’t see their colleagues’ comments)
The back-and-forth was slowing things down, and the lack of visibility into others’ comments was causing frustration.
That’s when dm decided it was time for a change. Here’s how their review process has improved since implementing Filestage over five years ago.
Gathering stakeholder feedback used to be slow and frustrating
Julia’s team mainly worked with PDF layouts for communication materials. Back then, their workflow looked like this:
- Receive a file from their agency via email or file share
- Save it on SharePoint
- Share the SharePoint link internally with multiple stakeholders
- Collect all comments separately, then send the file back to the agency via email or file share
It may look like a simple workflow on paper, but it was causing the team a number of issues. Here’s what they were up against:
- Different file versions bounced between emails, SharePoint links, and folders
- People didn’t always have access to open a file
- Comments weren’t always visible to everyone
- PDFs had to be downloaded, annotated, and re-uploaded before feedback could be shared
- Multiple versions meant manually merging comments
These challenges resulted in a significant amount of time being wasted resolving conflicting comments and sending files back and forth.
“Two main points were decisive: 1) The issue of simultaneous commenting and the visibility of others’ comments – this reduces redundancies. 2) Less back-and-forth of files and links.”
Julia Wolf, Team Leader of National Market Communication, dm-drogerie markt
The quest for full visibility and less back-and-forth
Julia and the team set out to find a solution that would:
- Let everyone comment at the same time, with full visibility of each other’s feedback
- Cut out the endless sending of files and links
That’s when their agency partner, Wongdoody (then oddity), suggested Filestage – a tool they were already using successfully with dm’s Content & SEO team.
“After we realized that Filestage could solve most of our challenges, we didn’t even look at another platform. If it works well and has already been tested by a few colleagues, why should colleagues get used to a new tool?”
Together with our customer success team, dm mapped their workflows, set up project templates, and tailored the platform to their needs.
Full transparency of every project status at a glance
Since implementing Filestage, dm has total visibility of every comment, asset version, and project status.
Julia says, “I find it particularly useful that you can attach something directly to comments, like a product image. And you can react to other people’s comments – this saves duplication and makes it easier to add bullet points in the right place. Or to disagree.”
This transparency, coupled with a structured workflow, has also sped up reviews. Now, a typical project flows like this:
- Agency uploads the creative concept to Filestage
- Project manager leaves feedback
- Revisions come back via Filestage
- Additional reviewers – product management, assortment teams, legal – add their input
- All feedback is bundled and sent back to the agency
- Final approval happens in Filestage before printing
Centralizing content reviews in one simple dashboard
Because Filestage supports multiple file types, dm can handle every review (even legal checks) in one place.
This means anyone jumping into a project can instantly see the latest version and all past feedback without asking for updates.
And the tool’s simplicity has been key to high adoption.
Julia says, “Filestage is super intuitive to use, which means that new reviewers don’t need any training. Everyone can easily find their way around.”
Content reviews are now faster and less frustrating
With Filestage, it’s easy to see the project status at a glance without clicking through endless SharePoint folders. Thanks to that full project visibility, Julia’s team now spends far less time answering questions about where files are or who said what.
“We have far fewer queries in the review process than before. Fewer ‘special requests’ because someone doesn’t have access and sends feedback by email, which then has to be merged. And thus, overall less time and frustration.”
The streamlined workflow has also saved the team time by reducing administrative work.
Julia adds, “When carrying out a project, we have less administrative ‘file management effort’. We also have improved transparency regarding the project status, because it is easier to see than clicking through various folders on SharePoint.”
File-sharing chaos is now just a distant memory
Today, dm runs a seamless content review process, and we’re proud to have been their partner in making it happen.
Julia concludes, “The easy handling, intuitive use, and especially the mega support from the Filestage colleagues make us wonder how we put up with email and file sharing for so long before.”
