5 Ways Artwork Management Gives Your Brand a Competitive Edge

They say that don’t judge a book by its cover. Unfortunately, this does not apply to consumer mindsets when they are making purchasing decisions. Good and attractive packaging with attractive visual elements and accurate product information contributes significantly to the perceived value of a product.

However, packaging artwork for products has a bigger role than just making a product attractive. The world of packaging artwork management is often complex and highly regulated. Be it general advertising of existing products, product redesign, or new product launches, a cloud-based packaging and artwork lifecycle management system emerges as a game changer to help these companies streamline processes, ensure compliance, and boost efficiency.

Given the rising number of SKUs and constant product evolution, tailoring product packaging to accommodate rapidly evolving marketing demands and opportunities can be a Herculean task if done manually. With artwork lifecycle management systems, businesses can meet all regulatory requirements, provide the required product information, and accelerate go-to-market capacities.

5 Instances When Time to Market is Critical and How Packaging Artwork Management Systems Help

Effective management of packaging artwork using a robust technology solution can help companies -

• Streamline processes, ensure compliance, and boost efficiency.
• Ensure that artwork versions are tracked and approved and compliance with regional and international regulations is maintained. 
• Simplify artwork management and allow companies to capitalize on market opportunities, manage the rising number of SKUs and constant product evolution.
• Tailor product packaging to accommodate rapidly evolving marketing demands and opportunities.

Beyond bringing these efficiencies and helping in cost saving, let us take a look at how a robust artwork management solution can influence the top line and unlock untapped revenue streams.

1. Drive Adaptability and Market Responsiveness

In most industries, owing to strict regulations regarding labeling and packaging, businesses need to manage the numerous changes driven by regulatory or brand needs.

With a robust artwork management solution, companies can

• Reduce the risk of recalls: The solution provides workflows for maximum efficiency, reduces the number of iterations, ensures regulatory compliance, and maintains brand consistency across all products and markets to reduce the risk of recalls.
• Ensure seamless collaboration: Artwork review processes and tools help businesses adapt to frequent label changes arising from updates in regulations. Businesses can manage multiple stakeholders, including designers, marketing teams, regulatory departments, and printers, to collaborate on artwork easily and ensure that everyone works on the latest approved version.
• Enable first-time-right: Packaging artwork management platforms streamline adherence to various aspects of product labeling and design and help businesses adapt and respond to market and regulatory changes quickly. This allows them to capitalize on revenue opportunities by going to market faster.

2. Accelerate Production to Leverage Market Opportunities 

In industries with intense competition, any delay in launching the product, even by a day, can lead to significant losses. 

A CPG company, for example, might want to launch a new shampoo size. Or a pharma company might need to change the pack inserts or medication guides. Manual and traditional management of all packaging artwork dependencies are long-drawn and effort-intensive. These also impact the time to get the product to the consumer as significant time is spent managing multiple SKUs.

With a packaging artwork management system,

• It is possible to effectively manage all artwork dependencies, generate alerts for changes in SKUs, and provide clear workflows that include regulatory submissions, artwork approvals, print & packaging specifications, etc.
• Set automatic audit logs, task assignments, alerts and reminders, real-time status, and more.
• Reduce approval time and packaging write-offs. 
• Accommodate product line extensions, market extensions, promos, regulatory adjustments, barcode changes, etc. swiftly.

Artwork management systems deliver quick output about product labels, design, and artwork and allow businesses to move from artwork approvals to printing with confidence and agility. Businesses can then leverage market capitalization opportunities and drive robust marketing activities based on seasonal and evolving market trends.

The capacity to respond to customer demands and get products to market faster creates more revenue opportunities for businesses.

3. Ensure Faster Product Launches Drive a Revenue Impact

A packaging artwork management solution provides access controls, audit trails, and digital rights management to protect valuable intellectual property and prevent counterfeiting.  

Let’s take an example of a consumer-packaged goods company that wants to introduce combo bundles during a festive season.  Design teams and marketing departments can leverage the power of artwork management solutions and save time and resources by utilizing streamlined workflows, version control, and digital asset management. This can enable the company to get the combo to the market faster and generate more revenue by giving the product more shelf days.

Artwork management systems have a direct impact on revenue as they combine artwork management, digital proofing, and collaboration features for faster artwork delivery.

4. Faster Pre-market Approvals

The pharma landscape has become intensely competitive. Amongst all the other regulatory demands, pharma products need pre-market approvals for their artwork. This requires companies to ensure information accuracy, consistency, and compliance when they send their work to the regulatory body. 

Delays in getting artwork approvals for product bundles, new brand designs, evolving SKUs, etc. have a negative impact on the product release date. To ensure timely approvals and product launches, businesses have to ensure packaging artwork efficiencies, map artwork elements to the packaging structure, and ensure accuracy and consistency in the final product packaging.

With a full-fledged artwork management solution, businesses can navigate the challenges of increasing SKU varieties, size, and shape variations, and launch product variations without any delay. Instead of wasting time on costly reworks and consequently losing revenues, a packaging artwork management solution ensures that the products go to market at lightning speed and get more shelf life.

5. Get it First-time-right

Getting packaging artwork right the first time around can open up revenue streams. Whether it is a seasonal special, a limited-edition product, combo offers, or a brand-wide design shift, it is qq2important for businesses to avoid time-consuming, effort-intensive manual adjustments in packaging artwork. 

Packaging & labeling is a mission-critical process that constitutes a significant part of the product development process. Accelerating this part allows businesses to accelerate artwork management by almost 50-70%. 

An AI-powered artwork management system allows faster adaptation to market trends and fosters creativity while ensuring that the artwork is right in the first go. It facilitates faster market entry and helps in building a strong brand image. The integration of advanced technologies such as artificial intelligence artwork management software creates avenues for innovative and interactive packaging designs, further enhancing brand visibility and influencing consumer engagement.

To sum up

As the business landscape gets intensely competitive, it is essential to capitalize on market opportunities and develop an increased responsiveness toward customer demands. For businesses to capture markets and increase revenues, it is critical to avoid operational mistakes such as incorrect labeling and enhance packaging artwork management capabilities.

AI-powered, robust Packaging Artwork Management solutions like ManageArtworks give businesses greater agility to respond to their customer needs and enter the market with velocity.  This collaborative platform accelerates the artwork approval process with real-time communication between various teams and enables businesses to use speed and compliance as their competitive advantage.

Connect with our experts to see how the ManageArtworks improves artwork management and creates revenue streams for your organization today!