Programme·Global
Global Digital Label Programme
Turns static product labels into trusted, structured data that people, systems and machines can reuse. I lead it across the EU, APAC, North America, ANZ and LATAM.
| Before | Now | |
|---|---|---|
| Programme | No programme | Global: EU, APAC, North America, ANZ, LATAM |
| EU | Separate country builds | 27 countries, 2028 |
| Label in the field | Paper | EU: scan, 1,500+ labels live |
| Authoring effort | Previous practice | About 40–50% less |
Mission
Turn product labels from static documents into trusted, structured, reusable data, and make that data available to the people, systems and machines that need it.
Vision
A connected label-data ecosystem. Ownership is clear, the data flows from authoritative sources, and the same information supports automated label creation, digital labels, compliant use in the field, and later field-specific decisions.
Value enablers
- Trusted, reusable label information
- Complete, current label information in a structured format, so teams and connected systems are not extracting it from documents again.
- Faster creation and maintenance
- Label authoring and review tied to structured source data, so there is less copying and a shorter cycle when an approved change has to go out.
- One foundation, several use cases
- Build the data once, then use it for regulatory work, customer-facing digital labels and digital farming. AgriGuide is the EU project on that foundation.
- Access at the moment of use
- Rates, dose and conditions of use in a form someone can search and apply, including on a phone in the field.
- Compliance in the workflow
- Authorised conditions in a machine-readable form, so farm-management systems and application equipment can follow the label.
- A path to field-specific decisions
- From country-level instructions on a document toward guidance that can take local conditions into account.
Problem
Product and use information sat in static documents. It was assembled by hand, spread across systems, hard to keep current, and not structured enough for reuse by regulatory teams, digital products, farm-management systems or application equipment.
Value
The near-term value is less manual effort and less duplication. Inside Bayer, writing labels from structured data cut authoring effort by about 40–50%, and overall workflow effort by about 50%. AgriGuide, the EU project, is online: a farmer can scan a label and get the conditions of use that apply in the field. More than 1,500 labels are published, across most of the EU, with all 27 countries in scope. The same data foundation is what later use cases sit on.
How I built it
I lead the global digital label programme. On the EU project, AgriGuide, the work is a CropLife Europe delivery with Bayer, BASF, Syngenta, Corteva and others. My part there was the tech stream, the reference data, Bayer's rollout across 27 countries, and getting IT, Marketing and Product Supply onto one plan.
Deployment
In the EU, AgriGuide is live at agriguide.eu. Pilots started in Germany, Italy and Romania, and Bayer is working toward a digitised EU portfolio by 2028. The global programme, which I lead, also runs in APAC, North America, ANZ and LATAM.
Stack
- Tech work stream
- Reference data work stream
- Cross-company alignment (CropLife Europe)
- Change & country coordination
- IT · Marketing · Product Supply
- Digital labels / SaaS