As organizations grow, managing labeling gets more complicated. You have to keep changes consistent across your current operations while also responding to new requirements that come with growth.
For example, imagine a global manufacturer with facilities in the US and Germany. Both locations make the same product and follow the same labeling requirements. When a labeling change is approved, it must be rolled out at both locations.
If updates are handled manually and locations aren’t connected, a change can take longer to reach every part of the business. One location might update its template quickly while another continues using the old version. When locations handle templates, approvals, and changes independently, it’s hard to keep track of each template and ensure each version is approved.
Ensuring that existing operations are aligned is just one challenge. Company growth brings another.
As a company’s operations expand, new demands emerge. And that means new requirements. Introducing a new product, entering a new market, or expanding a supplier network can introduce more complex labeling requirements. A new market might also require another language or different regulatory information, while a new product may require specific customer content. Each of these factors can lead to more label variations, templates, updates, and approvals to manage. If those new requirements aren’t reflected across existing templates and locations, some parts of the business may continue using labels that no longer contain the right information.
Both of these real-world examples highlight the challenges of managing labels at scale: keeping current operations aligned as changes happen, and managing new requirements as the business grows.
What is the difference between a label and a label template?
A label is the final output that appears on a product, package, pallet, or shipment. It can include product information, barcodes, customer-specific content, regulatory information, and other business data. A label template provides the structure used to create that output. In order to create the final label, the template may combine product, customer, and other business data. This distinction matters because many labeling changes are managed through the templates, rather than at the point of output. This helps to maintain consistency in information across print outputs. However, if templates are managed separately across printers or locations, it is also more difficult to keep changes consistent. And as new requirements and variations are introduced, there are more templates and variations to control across the business.
Therefore, the challenge isn’t just maintaining consistency for the final label. It’s managing the templates behind those labels as changes occur, and new requirements are introduced.
We have seen that the more complex a supply chain is, the more challenging it can be to keep everything consistent. So, what happens when you need to keep that process the same across five, 10, or even 50 locations?
Coordinating separate processes across multiple locations becomes exponentially harder. This is why it takes significant time – often many months – to update and implement new labeling standards within an organization and across supplier partners. However, if templates are coordinated across printers, sites, and partners, then teams can work more consistently with better visibility across operations. Changes can be rolled out more consistently, while new requirements and variations can be managed as the business expands.
In practice, there are a few ways to implement this process:
Some of these processes can take more time or resources to ensure than others, depending on the size of the organization and the ability to connect information across sites and systems.
The need for consistency extends beyond your own operations. Suppliers and other partners may need to follow the same labeling requirements, too. Loftware helps organizations connect with suppliers and other partners to share labeling and product identification requirements across the supply chain.
As your operations expand, your labeling process must ensure two things are aligned: existing processes must stay consistent across locations, and new requirements must be managed across the enterprise to maintain label integrity. By developing a more connected approach to templates, approvals, and changes, all parties can more easily work from the same information – even as labeling requirements evolve.
