Large enterprises often face significant challenges when it comes to updating product artworks. The process of manually creating and updating artwork for product labels can be time-consuming, error-prone, and resource-intensive. Add in multiple locations with many variants to edit, it becomes even slower and more prone to error. However, with the advent of artwork management, and now artwork automation tools, solutions are available to greatly improve this process. More and more enterprise companies, especially in regulated industries, are taking advantage of the significant improvements artwork automation can bring.
The Challenges of Updating Product Artworks
Large enterprises typically deal with a wide range of products and variations, each requiring unique artwork designs. Some of the key challenges faced by teams responsible for artwork include:
- Time Constraints: Manually creating and updating product artworks is a time-consuming process. Dealing with a high volume of SKUs and multiple variants can be a complex process. Teams often struggle to meet tight deadlines, resulting in delays in product launches, delays in getting a product back out to market after a recall, and missed market opportunities.
- Version Control: With multiple stakeholders involved in the artwork approval process, maintaining version control becomes complex and prone to errors. This can lead to confusion, rework, and errors in the final artworks. This can have severe consequences, especially in regulated industries where incorrect labeling cost lives, money, and reputation.
- Compliance and Regulations: Different products may have specific labeling requirements based on industry regulations or locations. Ensuring compliance with these regulations manually can be a daunting task, increasing the risk of non-compliance and legal issues.
Basic artwork management is not enough
Artwork management solutions have been around for many years. These solutions can approve, store artwork in an asset manager, and manage version control. However, according to Gartner, these solutions are "only artwork management that governs artwork activities for the final product packaging”. Artwork automation, in contrast, can do a lot more than simply storing, tracking and approving artworks. A single, end-to-end enterprise labeling and artwork management (LAM) solution controls the entire labeling process. This enables automated artwork creation and modification in the same system. These tools can update artwork over thousands of variants and locations and generate new artwork ready for print. All this can be done in as little as 60 seconds, compared to the many weeks and months of revisions and reworks that are often commonplace.The savings from automating artwork creation and modification all in the same system that manages artwork storage and approval can be vast.
How automated artwork generation works
Automated artwork generation tools offer a powerful solution to the challenges and pains faced by teams responsible for artwork. Here's how they can transform the process:
- Enhanced Efficiency: By using artwork automation, large enterprises can significantly reduce the time and effort required to create and update product labels. Automated tools can generate artwork templates, populate them with relevant information, and adapt designs for different product variations. This results in far faster iterations and a much quicker time-to-market.
- Streamlined Collaboration: Automated artwork generation tools provide a centralized platform for collaboration and version control. Stakeholders can review and approve designs in real-time, reducing errors, rework, and delays. Seamless integration with project management systems and communication tools ensures efficient coordination among team members.
- Compliance and Consistency: Automated artwork generation ensures compliance with industry regulations and labeling requirements. By integrating data from reliable sources, such as product databases or regulatory databases, these tools can dynamically generate accurate and up-to-date content, reducing the risk of non-compliance and legal issues.
Conclusion
Artwork automation is revolutionizing the way large enterprises create and update product labels. By automatically generating artworks in the artwork management system, new artworks can be created in seconds, instead of weeks. Adoption of this technology is increasing, especially in regulated industries.
