Modernize Your Labeling in Any SAP Landscape

SAP Solution Partners Offer Targeted Expertise 

SAP has developed a robust partner ecosystem with the goal of providing additional business value for their customers by helping them achieve agility and ongoing innovation in a variety of areas. The model which is being increasingly focused on with the launch of S4/HANA, is designed with a “new digital services economy” in mind. It enables a global set of partners to offer capabilities and solutions on top of SAP’s many platforms. These partners allow SAP to expand their capabilities and offer comprehensive solutions to their customers.

Solution Partners bring best practices and expertise in their specific field, while maintaining extensive knowledge of SAP solutions. An SAP Partner provides the opportunity for you to optimize your SAP software, offers training and support, and helping to ensure you maximize your investment. Ultimately, they help SAP customers get the most they can from their SAP business application.

Providing access to certified software solutions that integrate directly with their ERP solutions and other business applications, SAP has aligned with partners to build out capabilities in several areas, including Enterprise Labeling. This will continue as the cloud-based S/4HANA platform becomes the de facto ERP platform for SAP users.

As addressed above, to manage labeling many SAP customers have in the past used SAPscript and Smart Forms or even SAP’s Global Label Management (GLM) in the case of those using SAP’s EHS solution for dealing with chemical labeling regulations. However, today there are opportunities for companies to modernize manufacturing and warehouse labeling to best of breed labeling solutions.

These solutions which offer flexibility, portability, and scalability for labeling don’t require extensive IT support and serve as a solid alternative to SAPscript and Smart Forms, as well as for Adobe Forms. Users can leverage the transactions and access all their data in SAP to drive labeling quickly and easily to meet customer and regulatory requirements.

Eliminate Labeling Challenges

Maybe you’re ready for S4/HANA now? Maybe it’s part of your future plans? But either way, when you integrate your labeling with any SAP landscape you’ll achieve resiliency, gain transparency and drive sustainability. Most importantly you can minimize costs, improve agility and operational efficiencies while reducing errors.

Are you using SAPscript, Smartforms, and Adobe Forms or some other type of legacy approach for your labeling in SAP? Well, here are some key reasons why SAP users should consider updating their labeling processes now regardless of where they are on the journey to S4/HANA:

• Legacy approaches that weren’t originally designed for labeling can require a lengthy process for any label updates.
• With some outdated methods it can take about weeks to make a single label change rather than hours or even minutes when using an Enterprise Labeling model.
• Updates require scare IT and technical resources to make label changes, rather than enabling business users.
• Disparate, outdated, and inconsistent labeling methods can be difficult to scale, difficult to maintain and generally don’t support high volume printing.
• Legacy labeling solutions struggle to natively support the thousands of different printer makes and models on the market.
• When you can’t support dynamic labeling and enable rapid change, you end up managing excessive label templates – requiring added time and effort.

Modernize and Future Proof Your Labeling in SAP

Regardless of where you are at in your labeling journey, Enterprise Labeling offers a range of benefits. You can save time, reduce maintenance, scale operations, and enable streamlined compliance when you integrate your labeling with SAP. You can gain real value when you draw labeling data from sources of truth such as your ERP, WMS, MES, logistics or sourcing applications. And a comprehensive Enterprise Labeling solution integrates with SAP and any of your other business applications.

Both SAPscript and SmartForms and Adobe Forms will continue to work in S/4HANA, but if you’re using an Enterprise Labeling solution, you’ll be able to create new efficiencies and speed up your labeling process. Leverage your existing approach as you start to take advantage of the new efficiencies that enterprise solutions will bring:

• Make label changes quickly: Make label changes independent of your SAP production environment. There’s no need for coding or technical resources to manage formatting or updates. Configurable business logic enables users to easily support labeling complexities by dynamically updating labels from approved templates. As requirements evolve, users can manage a single template to address any new customer, regional or regulatory requirements. Update the most complex barcode or RFID labels in minutes instead of weeks or months.
• Consolidate label templates: Stop managing and updating an excess of label templates. Instead of creating new labels for each new requirement, users can manage a single intelligent template for a wide range of complex variations while drastically reducing changes and maintenance. Additionally, a single label can be designed to print across thousands of printers, in many label orientations and even different print resolutions.
• Empower users to handle the label updates: Reduce the burden on IT when you empower business users to make changes and address customer specific needs. This can all be done without affecting upstream systems - offering rapid, on-demand changes in color, branding, language/regional, regulatory requirements and more. This also means you no longer will need to wait around for scarce and costly IT resources to become available so changes can beimplemented on the fly. 
• Reduce errors by digitalizing and automating quality control: Say goodbye to manual quality control processes that introduce risk and reduce speed to market. Digitalize the label approval process to improve quality control and meet the needs of a circular economy and you’ll benefit from less oversight, less error, and less cost. No more mislabeling resulting in quarantine, rework, waste, shipping delays, recall and unhappy customers.
• Minimize regulatory and compliance risks: Avoid costly recalls and fines that result from labeling errors. Ensure global compliance on all labels for regulatory requirements for color, warnings, symbologies, languages and industry standards includingEHS, GHS, OSHA, and REACH/CLP. You can quickly and efficiently access SAP and other master data sources tomeet evolving labeling regulations, avoid fines and enter new markets with ease.
• Enhance operational efficiencies: Improve print performance and control of your barcode label printers for all your factory and warehouse labeling while streamlining inventory management. Production and logistics become optimized when you increase label print speeds to just a few milli-seconds and print thousands of labels per minute. Speed up label changes and label printing, along with shipping and quality control while reducing errors, waste, rework, recalls and even costs. And native drivers can support thousands of printer makes and models across your diverse global landscape. Whether you’re operating in the cloud or on-premises, you can quickly and easily print millions of labels a day.

Extend Labeling Across your Digital Supply Chain

An Enterprise Labeling solution also transforms your inbound and outbound labeling to improve the accuracy of your inventory and seamlessly and securely support customers, partners, suppliers, tollers and third-party logisticsproviders (3PLs). You’ll be able to optimize for increased speed and efficiency and scale globally across your factories and warehouses—right out to your external business partners, suppliers, and other stakeholders.

You’ll be able to easily add new locations or extend labeling as needed while offering controlled access to partners and suppliers to improve collaboration and eliminate relabeling. You’ll also minimize costs, improve operational efficiency and agility, and eliminate redundancies.

Real-time business intelligence for your labeling with full auditing and reporting also offers complete visibility of print jobs and devices so you can monitor and track patterns and behaviors for all your labeling activities.

Supporting a Sustainable Enterprise with Cloud Labeling

It’s become clear that sustainability has become a crucial aspect of modern-day business, with consumers paying close attention to companies’ Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) practices. It’s also clear that SAP is focused on a circular economy and in offering smart and sustainable solutions for their customers.

Because labeling touches all corners of an organization, moving it into the cloud positively impacts the entire enterprise—from manufacturing and distribution to sales and customer service. An Enterprise Labeling approach supports an intelligent sustainable enterprise by enabling new levels of visibility and transparency into your warehouse and across you supply chain. And, as more customers shift purchasing behaviors toward brands that run environmentally friendly operations, cloud-based labeling helps organizations build strong ESG strategies.

You can support serialization by giving each product a digital passport and use track and trace to support a circular economy. Additionally, real time business intelligence for labeling offers full auditing and reporting with complete visibility of print jobs and devices so you can monitor and track patterns and behaviors for all your labeling activities. These intelligent supply chains can track, trace, and authenticate products at every stage of the journey, from raw materials to consumer goods. Additionally, cloud-based labeling solutions reduce inventory, eliminate a large global footprint, and ensure that all products are made, shipped, and delivered to the right place, thereby avoiding unnecessary loss, rework, and waste.

As the global supply chain continues to evolve and new regulations around sustainability are introduced, cloud labeling will become increasingly essential to remaining competitive.

Transform Your Digital Supply Chain with Enterprise Labeling

Not getting labeling right can have a profound, negative effect on your organization’s bottom line. By taking labeling into the cloud, for example, you can not only reduce the burden on your internal IT infrastructure, but you can also make sustainability gains, attain higher levels of supply chain visibility, and improve product traceability across that network.

As companies move from ECC to S/4 HANA, most of them will be digitally transforming their businesses. These “compelling events” will require companies to take stock of their complete business and supply chain operations. And, with manufacturers being asked to “do more” with fewer resources, and with new labeling requirements being introduced all the time, smart companies are turning Enterprise Labeling into a competitive advantage. That’s why more and more manufacturers are integrating labeling with SAP and other business applications to streamline operations, improve overall efficiency and better manage their end-to-end supply chains.