How to Prepare Your Label and Artwork Data for Software Implementation

Kallik's Chief Delivery Officer, Beth Peckover, recently told labeling and packaging leaders something that tends to surprise people: the software is rarely what trips up an implementation. The harder, less glamorous work happens before go-live — and nowhere is that more true than with your existing label and artwork data.

In our blog from a couple of weeks ago, 10 Reasons Labeling Software Implementations Fail, underestimated data migration and neglected change management both made the list. This week, we're going deeper on the data side: what "data migration" actually involves, why it's harder than most teams expect, and how to start preparing now – whether you're three months from choosing a vendor or three months from go-live.
 

Why data migration is the most underestimated part of implementation

Ask most teams what worries them about a new labeling platform, and they'll talk about configuration, workflows, or integrations. Almost nobody names the thing Beth sees trip up projects most often: getting their own existing content ready to move.

"One of the most complex parts of that journey is actually getting your existing content, your existing labels and artworks, into the new system," says Beth Peckover, Kallik's Chief Delivery Officer. "It's often underestimated how difficult it even is on the customer side to actually assemble all of the existing labels and artworks into one place, and go: 'Here you go – here's everything that we have, and here's all the metadata for those items.'"

For most regulated manufacturers, that's not a small ask. Label and artwork files accumulate for years across shared drives, print vendor archives, PDFs and legacy systems, often with no single source of truth and incomplete metadata – missing approval history, unclear version status, or regulatory classifications that were never properly recorded in the first place. Multiply that across every market and SKU a business operates in, and "just send us what you have" becomes a genuinely large undertaking.
 

Start assessing your content now, not at kickoff

The teams who handle this well don't wait for an implementation partner to ask for their data. They start the groundwork early.

"Start preparing that now," Beth advises. "Start assessing what really is the scope. What existing labels and artworks do you have, what don't need to be migrated."

In practice, that assessment usually covers four things: a full inventory of active and historical label and artwork files, wherever they currently live; the status of each one (in active use, discontinued, pending a regulatory update); how complete the supporting metadata is for each item; and where duplicate or inconsistent versions exist across markets.
 

Decide what's legacy and what's actually worth migrating

Not everything needs to move into the new platform on day one. Beth's advice is to separate what's still live from what isn't:

"Figure out what's legacy and maybe can just be stored in a separate repository, or simply uploaded into a separate repository."

A label for a discontinued product, or an artwork that hasn't changed in years and isn't tied to an upcoming regulatory deadline, doesn't need the same treatment as something your regulatory or product teams touch every quarter. Sorting that out early saves real time once migration starts.
 

Calculate the ROI before you digitize everything

Digitizing content isn't easy. Every file you bring across takes time, review and validation. Beth frames the decision in plain economic terms:

"Think about the return on investment. Think about what you really need to digitize. You don't want to spend time and money on digitizing artworks that are probably not gonna change in the next five years."

Prioritize by how often something changes and how much regulatory exposure it carries, rather than simply working through everything you own in alphabetical order.
 

Build your metadata picture early

The content itself is only half the job, as the metadata around it is what makes that content usable once it's migrated. Before implementation starts, it's worth pulling together regulatory classifications and country approvals, translations and language versions, version and approval history, and any linked product data such as SKUs or GTINs. Teams that compile this early spend far less time going back and forth with their implementation partner later.
 

Where the right implementation partner makes the difference

None of this removes the need for good internal preparation, but it does get easier with the right partner alongside you. We'll be sharing more on how Veraciti™ supports this part of the journey in an upcoming post. For now, the work that matters most is the work only your team can do: knowing what you have, and deciding what's worth bringing forward.
 

A quick checklist to get started

• Inventory every active and legacy label or artwork file across markets and departments
• Note what's missing (metadata, approvals, translations) alongside each item
• Mark each item as "migrate," "archive" or "retire"
• Rank what you're migrating by change frequency and regulatory exposure, not just age
• Assign one internal owner to sign off on the final migration scope

If you're looking to learn more about what actually makes a software implementation partnership work, straight from an implementation expert, look out for our upcoming blog, where Beth shares what separates the implementations that stay on track from the ones that don't – plus a first look at the full implementation guide this series is building toward.

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