Schaeffler cuts global content creation time in half with Airtable & AI
Schaeffler consolidated six tools, cut content cycle time by 50%, and scaled global marketing operations with Airtable AI, supporting 370 users across 50 countries.
6
Day reduction in content request age
1
Single system consolidated from six legacy tools
35%
Achieved IT cost savings
About Schaeffler AG
Schaeffler is a global industrial and automotive supplier with 120,000 employees and operations in over 50 countries. In 2024, the company reported €18.2 billion in annual revenue reflecting its scale and global reach. Its Global Branding and Marketing team supports a complex, matrixed structure—serving regional and divisional teams across the world with content and campaign needs that span languages, markets, and priorities.
The challenge: fragmented tools, manual work, and inconsistency
When Jan Sassmannshausen stepped into the newly created role of Head of Content Strategy in 2023, he inherited a scattered tech stack: one tool for intake, another for project management, a third for capacity planning, and yet another for file storage. Request workflows were stitched together manually. Designers were interrupted constantly. Attachments often got lost. The company was missing a full overview of what content was being created across the business.
“People were manually moving data between platforms. Attachments would get lost. Designers were constantly interrupted for updates. We had no centralized visibility into what content was being created or how it aligned with our brand.”
The solution: a unified system for content and collaboration
In under two years, Jan led the shift to Airtable, consolidating tools, streamlining workflows, and bringing visibility to content operations. Starting with a proof of concept built in just a few months, his team eliminated four separate systems, EasyJob and others, and launched a single platform for intake, assignment, asset management, and reporting.
Key to the rollout was Airtable’s flexibility. Jan’s team built a parent-child app model, enabling local teams to manage their own work while feeding structured data into a global editorial calendar. That calendar became the foundation for more strategic planning—and for adapting AI-powered content marketing.
How AI supercharged the workflow
With Omni and Fields Agents in Airtable, the team tackled pain points that had no scalable manual solution:
AI-powered campaign concept generation
Marketers can now generate conceptual visuals in seconds to bring their campaign ideas to life from a simple description. With this, teams can ideate on their ideas, discuss different drafts and land on a decision before asking a Designer to devise the final asset. This workflow closes the gap between new ideas and execution in the market.
Agency reviews and discovery
After narrowing its vendor list from 2,000 to 180 agencies, Schaeffler uses agents to analyze free-text survey responses and generate structured, unbiased summaries. This includes automatic translation from German to English, helping teams evaluate performance consistently. Each agency profile features AI-generated pros, cons, sentiment scores, and star ratings, replacing raw, subjective commentary with actionable data.
Smarter designer assignments
AI now matches incoming requests to designers based on skillset and availability, reducing task assignment time from 30 minutes to less than a minute. This also protects designers’ deep work time by cutting out disruptive back-and-forth.Theme-based editorial planning
AI reviews all submitted content each month and can score it against Schaeffler’s strategic narratives, such as sustainability or employer branding. If content doesn’t align, AI can suggest tweaks or alternate timing. The result: a cohesive brand voice across global teams, without the need for endless alignment meetings.
The impact
Reduced content request age from 12 days to 6
Saved 5+ hours per employee per week
Consolidated six legacy tools into one system
Achieved 35% IT cost savings
Enabled global editorial oversight and content scoring
Replaced 2–3 recurring planning meetings with a single strategic session
Launched 10 additional global use cases across departments
Looking ahead: Scaling self-service and strategic visibility
Jan’s team is now exploring AI-powered content creation plus graphic needs and expanding Airtable AI, agents and app building, to front-end users, enabling internal teams to search, request, and assign work through natural language prompts. As more departments adopt the system, Airtable is becoming a central hub not just for marketing, but for cross-functional collaboration.
“Airtable, with AI, lets us move at the speed our brand needs. We finally have a system that keeps up with the business”