Optimizing mission-critical labeling to succeed in today's global supply chain

LOFTWARE FAQ SERIES INTERVIEWS WITH LABELING EXPERTS A SEVEN-PART SERIES BLUEPRINT FOR LABELING SUCCESS 2INTERVIEWS CAN YOU MAKE BARCODE CHANGES QUICKLY? ..................................................................................................... P.3 CAN YOU SUPPORT GLOBAL, HIGH VOLUME BARCODE LABEL PRINTING? ....................................................... P.6 CAN YOU SEAMLESSLY ADDRESS VARIABILITY IN LABELING? ............................................................................ P.9 CAN YOU INTEGRATE LABELING WITH YOUR ENTERPRISE APPLICATIONS? ................................................... P.12 CAN YOU EMPOWER USERS TO EASILY CREATE AND UPDATE LABELS? ........................................................... P.15 CAN YOU SCALE AND MANAGE GLOBAL BARCODE LABELING? ........................................................................ P.18 CAN YOU OFFER SUPPORT AND BEST PRACTICES FOR GLOBAL LABELING? .................................................. P.21 A SEVEN-PART SERIES BLUEPRINT FOR LABELING SUCCESS 3How can you optimize mission-critical labeling to enable your business to succeed in today’s evolving global supply chain? This Q&A is part of a seven part series that addresses key questions that companies should consider when they review ensuing requirements and current capabilities of their existing barcode labeling solutions. The series will explore all of the labeling essentials involved in creating a “Blueprint for Labeling Success.” We’ll question a panel of Loftware labeling experts to take a closer look at how companies today utilize Enterprise Labeling Solutions to meet complex labeling challenges while scaling to meet global labeling requirements. In today’s fast paced global supply chain it’s critical to be able to respond to custom- er requirements quickly and efficiently on a global scale. Failing to do so in a timely fashion results in dissatisfied customers and loss of business. Without implement- ing a labeling approach that enables rapid label change globally, companies are forced to maintain countless permutations of labels. This results in more expense in maintaining labels and a lack of consistency. Enterprise Labeling which offers centralized dynamic, data-driven labeling allows companies to limit the number of label permutations and increase supply chain efficiency throughout their global operations. Q. WHY IS IT IMPORTANT TO CHANGE LABELS DYNAMICALLY? Companies today are faced with complexities and variations in labeling that they didn’t need to deal with in the past. Customer requirements and regulatory stan- dards are increasing and evolving at a rapid rate. Not to mention the fact that today’s companies are scaling globally with sites and partners around the world, where labeling is mission critical. This requires companies to address label- ing on a global scale so that regional, language and other business requirements can easily be met. However, when companies are working to support countless labeling variations they struggle with a staggering amount of label templates or designs, all which must be created and maintained separately. This obviously involves a lot of time and work to make sure that each and every permutation reflects necessary changes when updates are made. So the question is – how do you do this in an efficient manner without costing the company substantial time and money? A BLUEPRINT FOR LABELING SUCCESS: A SEVEN PART SERIES CAN YOU MAKE BARCODE CHANGES QUICKLY? INTERVIEW WITH JOSH ROFFMAN, VP OF PRODUCT MANAGEMENT, LOFTWARE, INC. Josh Roffman is Vice President of Product Management at Loftware. He has over 20 years of product management experience with leading enterprise software com- panies. Specializing in the impact of supply chain trends on enterprise labeling, Mr. Roffman frequently speaks on webinars and at industry events to thousands of participants on topics ranging from labeling challenges and trends to supply chain optimization and business drivers for labeling. 4Some older methods of supporting changing labeling requirements may work fine enough for small companies with lower volumes and less label complexity, but when you’re dealing with the type of increasing volumes that large, global companies maintain it’s a different story. Managing the exponential growth of label templates and formats can create a significant burden on these types of businesses. An Enterprise Labeling Solution that can easily and dynam- ically manage mass label changes, allows companies to respond quickly to new requirements, while maintaining labeling consistency across a global supply chain. This type of data-driven labeling also enables these businesses to achieve greater responsiveness in meeting changing labeling requirements, and offers a dramatic reduction in overall label maintenance. Q. WHY IS STANDARDIZATION AND CENTRALIZATION IMPORTANT TO ACHIEVE THE BENEFITS OF LABELING? Centralization is really important in maximizing the value of dynamic, data-driven labeling. By centralizing their label- ing, companies are able to use a common set of label formats across their organization that are configured to be dynamic with label content being driven directly by the sources of truth for label data. This approach offers the ability to have all the variations required in label output, accounting for region, language, product, and brand informa- tion without using different label templates. It also enables companies to move from hard coding labels to a more flexible paradigm that enables the source data to drive what’s on the label. So, the power is really in the simplicity of leveraging a small number of label formats or templates to drive a nearly unlimited variety of labels. Of course standardization is also key in achieving these benefits. Many global organizations have hundreds of different locations with different divisions, groups and functions spread across the globe. When companies standardize and focus on a common approach to labeling that can be data driven, they are able to achieve labeling consistency and take advantage of dynamic, data driven labeling. Q. HOW IS DYNAMIC, DATA-DRIVEN LABELING CRITICAL TO ENABLING CONSISTENCY AND SIMPLIFYING LABEL CHANGES ACROSS A GLOBAL SUPPLY CHAIN? With dynamic, data-driven labeling companies can make changes to data or images in upstream data sources which enable both large scale changes and labeling consistency at the same time. By driving labeling directly from sources of truth for data, companies are able to make any changes to data or images centrally and leverage their Enterprise Labeling Solution to ensure that those changes can be reflected in all of the appropriate labels at the same time. This ability ensures that companies with multiple users at different locations have immediate access to labels and label data reflecting any mandated changes. This ability to make large-scale changes with immediacy is essential for companies that can’t afford labeling errors and when brand representation and labeling consistency is a must. ©2015 Loftware, Inc. All Rights Reserved. All other marks are the property of their respective owners. • www.loftware.com 5 Q. HOW CAN THIS HELP MY GLOBAL OPERATIONS IN THE SUPPLY CHAIN? Rather than resisting label change brought on by regulatory, customer, or business requirements, companies are able to embrace and even offer changes that will help drive efficiency and satisfaction with customers, partners and within the business. Maintaining an Enterprise Labeling Solution, which enables dynamic, data-driven labeling has a ton of benefits. It improves customer responsiveness significantly, reduces maintenance and overhead and streamlines overall supply chain operations. This allows companies to respond to customer requirements quickly and efficiently on a global scale, providing new opportunities to grow their business. Q. ARE THERE ANY SPECIFIC INDUSTRIES, WHICH WOULD BENEFIT MOST FROM THIS APPROACH TO LABELING? Yes. Although this type of labeling is important across all industries, it can provide special value in cases when you’re talking about a large, global organization with many locations and many different labels. Also, it is critical in industries, such as food and beverage, pharmaceutical and chemical where companies are dealing with evolving indiutsry regula- tions and extensive variability in labeling. This approach also offers clear benefits in many highly regulated industries like the pharmaceutical and medical device industries where labels are subject to a validation process under FDA (US Food and Drug Administration) guidelines. The process that medical device companies go through in validating labels with the FDA is onerous and, as a result, minimizing the amount of label changes that are made to the template is critical. Dynamic, data-driven labeling allows these companies to keep their labels static while only making a change in a single place, to the source data. This allows a single point of validation versus having to validate each and every label that uses a particular data element or image. Although some industries might not fall under the same regulatory oversight, the value of simplifying changes and ensuring consistency holds can still have a significant positive business impact. 6How can you optimize mission-critical labeling to enable your business to succeed in today’s evolving global supply chain? This Q&A is part of a seven part series that addresses key questions that companies should consider when they review ensuing requirements and current capabilities of their existing barcode labeling solutions. The series will explore all of the labeling essentials involved in creating a “Blueprint for Labeling Success.” We’ll question a panel of Loftware labeling experts to take a closer look at how companies today utilize Enterprise Labeling Solutions to meet complex labeling challenges while scaling to meet global labeling requirements. Inefficiencies in barcode label printing can decrease a company’s throughput, re- sulting in customer dissatisfaction, delays, missed deadlines, fines and ultimately a significant impact to overall business performance. Today, companies must be able to easily scale and handle high volumes of label throughput accurately, and without fail. To efficiently meet these expanding business requirements, it is essential to optimize speed and network efficiency to print labels quickly and efficiently, indepen- dent of printer make and model. Implementing an Enterprise Labeling Solution with high volume global printing capabilities allows companies to optimize their invest- ment in printers, maximize print performance and scale globally. Q. WHAT CHALLENGES DO COMPANIES ENCOUNTER WHEN TRYING TO ADDRESS REQUIREMENTS FOR HIGH VOLUME GLOBAL PRINTING? There are a host of things you need to consider when addressing high volume global printing, ranging from network throughput and latency, to print speeds, to issues with label and device management, as well as security. When busi- nesses aren’t able to print labels at a predetermined or expected speeds, this can mean a disruption and even a stop in production. It also could result in significant downtime, which can cost companies millions and impact customer satisfaction. Also, when faced with printing performance issues and slow production times, companies may need to arrange for more capacity by having multiple different lines for print requests. This undoubtedly increases mainte- nance and cost for the company. A BLUEPRINT FOR LABELING SUCCESS: A SEVEN PART SERIES CAN YOU SUPPORT GLOBAL, HIGH VOLUME BARCODE LABEL PRINTING? Mark Wick is Vice President of Software Development at Loftware. Mr. Wick has over 25 years experience in the architect- ing and delivering world-class supply chain, enterprise applica- tion integration, and enterprise labeling software. Mark also led the development of the labeling industry’s first browser-based, all- in-one Enterprise Labeling Solution, Loftware Spectrum®. Mr. Wick is an expert in the labeling technol- ogies and holds a BS in computer science from MIT. INTERVIEW WITH MARK WICK, VP OF SOFTWARE DEVELOPMENT, LOFTWARE, INC. 7There are also issues with label management and having to manage a wide range of label templates, as well as device management since there are so many different types of devices involved in label printing today. And, then there is integrating the company’s data into the printing process, since that data may not be located in the same place as the printers. Another important challenge is security. When you’re dealing with access to data, companies need to think about preventing unauthorized access to data to limit the possibility of making mistakes resulting in mislabeling. Q. WHAT CAPABILITIES FACILITATE HIGH VOLUME GLOBAL PRINTING? The primary one is the ability for LAN based networks to have performance that is similar to that of a WAN based network. What that means is that you can look at a printer that’s in Japan from a system in the United States and treat that printer as though it were right next to you. The infrastructure has to support that at the company site, but the labeling solution you use also has to support that concept. It can’t look at that printer and say that’s some Windows printer on the other side of the world. It has to look like it’s right next to you. Also, browser-based capabilities facilitate global scaling and high volume global printing. With browser-based labeling solutions you don’t need to install any client software to be able to use the system. You simply bring your browser up and you’re off and running. Also, standardization and the sophisticated integration capabilities today make a single source of truth more accessible to labeling solutions facilitating printing on a global scale. Network technology is also important. The technology, which offers access on a global level, has developed substan- tially over the past ten years and continues to evolve. The concept of high-speed VPNs fifteen years ago looked like magic, but today they are commonplace. The idea that today you could have an office in Germany that could simply pull a large file off a drive in the United States in a couple of seconds is amazing. To continue to embrace these tech- nologies and to keep pace with demands of global organizations, companies need to consider an Enterprise Labeling approach to address expanding business requirements for high volume global printing. Q. HOW CAN AN ENTERPRISE LABELING SOLUTION ENABLE COMPANIES TO MEET HIGH-VOLUME LABEL PRINTING REQUIREMENTS? I think the functionality of an Enterprise Labeling Solution offers a variety of benefits for high volume printing. First, there’s the performance side of it. The solution has got to be fast and it needs to be delivering as little data as possible to get the label printed. Also, it has to be scalable, not just in terms of the number of labels that are being printed but also the number of printers being used. Using an Enterprise Labeling Solution, which offers access to native printer drivers, reduces print streams to minimize network traffic, optimizes print performance and limits maintenance to meet these high volume requirements. ©2015 Loftware, Inc. All Rights Reserved. All other marks are the property of their respective owners. • www.loftware.com 8 When you can reduce the size of print streams you’re able to dramatically increase print speed. It’s especially import- ant for remote sites where you want to provide the smallest possible print stream or amount of data to these sites as possible. If you can do this, you can save substantial time and money with your label printing. The key here is to simplify the printing process with fewer moving parts in your labeling solution and enable companies to manage and support a broad set of printers across locations. This ultimately reduces maintenance and management of the printer network, increasing control and ensuring consistency. It also makes it easier to scale your labeling solution as demand increases, which can result in significant cost savings. Enterprise Labeling Solutions utilize modern, multi-tier architectures to offer a standardized and centralized way of managing labels throughout a global supply chain. Companies are able to access data from their systems of record or their sources of truth, and have that data available at the right spot so that label printing can be done efficiently with the correct data. When a company adds a new location, a division, or even does an acquisition, the increased labeling can be managed centrally, reducing maintenance and limiting the need for additional resources throughout multiple re- gions, creating substantial savings for the company. Also, the approach allows controls over the quality of what’s being printed which is especially critical in a validated environment. From a global standpoint an Enterprise Labeling Solution lets you manage what you’re doing from one location and still print anywhere. 9How can you optimize mission-critical labeling to enable your business to succeed in today’s evolving global supply chain? This Q&A is part of a seven part series that addresses key questions that companies should consider when they review ensuing requirements and current capabilities of their existing barcode labeling solutions. The series will explore all of the labeling essentials involved in creating a “Blueprint for Labeling Success.” We’ll question a panel of Loftware labeling experts to take a closer look at how companies today utilize Enterprise Labeling Solutions to meet complex labeling challenges while scaling to meet global labeling requirements. Labeling today is complex; companies are faced with a wide range of evolving requirements. They include regional, language, customer and regulatory require- ments, which all must be met in a quick and efficient manner to avoid disruption to business and to companies supply chains. Companies that are not able to support these new requirements and streamline label changes to deal with this extensive variability can end up with fines, dissatisfied customers and loss of business. Enter- prise Labeling allows businesses to deal with variability in labeling by enabling label formatting and content to change dynamically to support a myriad of different label combinations with a minimum number of label designs. Q. WHAT ARE THE MAJOR DRIVERS CAUSING VARIABILITY IN LABELING? There are a number of areas that cause variability in labeling, but the primary drivers are customer specific and regulatory requirements. There really is no standard label anymore that works for everybody. Customers are becoming more and more demanding about the labels that appear on goods and products they receive, distribute and sell. For instance, there may be a single standard product that works for everyone but the product label may vary greatly from customer to customer based on their unique requirements. Although it’s the same product, it could require the label have different data, images or other information to meet the customer specific needs–so cus- tomers are driving a vast amount of variability in labeling today. A BLUEPRINT FOR LABELING SUCCESS: A SEVEN PART SERIES CAN YOU SEAMLESSLY ADDRESS VARIABILITY IN LABELING? Michael Ward is Vice President of Technical Services at Loftware. Mr. Ward is a 25 veteran in the management of software projects, sales engineering, technical sup- port and professional services. He is well regarded as an expert in the labeling space and leads pre-sales, professional services, and techni- cal support teams that work with large, global companies to institute best practices for labeling while enabling continuous, mission-criti- cal operations. INTERVIEW WITH MICHAEL WARD, VP OF TECHNICAL SERVICES, LOFTWARE, INC. 10 Certainly regulatory is also driving variability, across a broad set of industries like chemicals, food and beverage, medi- cal device, pharmaceuticals and many others. The location where a product is made and where a product is shipped is a factor that further complicates labeling and how compliance can be achieved as each country or region has specific versions of regulatory requirements. For example, health and safety information must be indicated in the language of the country the product is made and if it’s being shipped to another country then information must also be provided on the label in that country’s language. Also, depending on the product, there may be requirements for a compliance logo (such as the RoHS logo for electronic products). So it’s also possible that product itself can dictate variability in labeling. Q. HOW CAN VARIABILITY NEGATIVELY AFFECT A BUSINESS? Companies have to address variability one way or another; whether it’s in an automated fashion with their current labeling solution or through manual effort. When it comes to manual labeling companies need to either apply labels directly to each product to address the customer specific requirement or make sure that each product or variant of that product, in a regulatory case, has labels pre-built. This obviously involves a significant amount of time and effort. So, the impact of variability is significant on a business. It can mean increased cost and it can mean a manual labor-in- tensive process, which can result in time to market problems when companies can’t deliver products fast enough or on time for their customers’ schedules. When it’s necessary to manage the process manually or to produce multiple label permutations, time becomes a factor and this ultimately can slow production and can mean delayed shipments, which can result in fines and dissatisfied customers. When variability isn’t addressed, products and shipments can be denied or even pulled from customs if they are not labeled correctly. Also, managing this type of extensive variability in a manual fashion can result in mislabeling, resulting in delays and fines. Q. HOW CAN IMPLEMENTING AN ENTERPRISE LABELING SOLUTION HELP A COMPANY MANAGE REGULATORY AND CUSTOMER REQUIREMENTS? Having an Enterprise Labeling Solution means you are able to automate your labeling process and utilize business logic to deal with extensive variability. With this approach, business users can access the labeling solution to address any necessary changes without having to involve IT. They can deal directly with the customer to meet regulatory or cus- tomer specific transactions in a timely and less intensive way, using less technical resources. This approach is more cost effective with quicker time to market. When a company uses an Enterprise Labeling Solution, they can dynami- cally change label content so they can easily manage regional, language and any customer specific requirements. Any changes and updates can be made in hours or days rather than months so that deadlines can be met. ©2015 Loftware, Inc. All Rights Reserved. All other marks are the property of their respective owners. • www.loftware.com 11 An Enterprise Labeling Solution also offers symbologies, tools, and integration to sources of regulatory data to make sure the needs of each customer is being met throughout each channel of a company’s supply chain. This type of centralized label management can help ensure that your labeling has consistency and that your company is adhering to regulatory guidelines throughout your company’s global supply chain. This approach also removes the threat of mislabeling. Q. HOW CAN CONFIGURABLE BUSINESS LOGIC IMPROVE A COMPANY’S OVERALL RESPON- SIVENESS IN MEETING CHANGING LABELING REQUIREMENTS? Having configurable business logic allows business users to address the changes or new requirements without having to go back and reprogram or change information in their corporate systems. They don’t have to do anything special because they already have all the information they need in their systems of record and they can just build or update rules in a rules engine. They can address any particular requirement in the labeling solution without having to impact other business systems and they can do it very quickly. Configurable business logic also is critical in reducing the number of labels a company has to manage since dynamic changes can be made to templates rather than making new templates for every variation of label. 12 How can you optimize mission-critical labeling to enable your business to succeed in today’s evolving global supply chain? This Q&A is part of a seven part series that addresses key questions that companies should consider when they review ensuing requirements and current capabilities of their existing barcode labeling solutions. The series will explore all of the labeling essentials involved in creating a “Blueprint for Labeling Success.” We’ll question a panel of Loftware labeling experts to take a closer look at how companies today utilize Enterprise Labeling Solutions to meet complex labeling challenges while scaling to meet global labeling requirements. Integrating labeling with enterprise applications and sources of truth for label data allows companies to automate their labeling processes and avoid mislabeling issues which can cost businesses time and money. Enterprise Labeling Solutions, that offer certified integration and the seamless exchange of data, eliminate the need for manual processes and allow companies to leverage existing systems and user interactions. This approach automates the labeling process, ensures label data accuracy, and improves overall efficiency. Q. WHAT ARE THE ADVANTAGES OF INTEGRATING LABELING TO ENTERPRISE APPLICATIONS AND KEY SOURCES OF LABEL DATA? Integrating labeling to enterprise applications and key sources of data is critical in today’s global supply chains. One of the many important advantages is the ability to automate the labeling process. Best practices for companies that have invest- ed significant money in their enterprise applications is to leverage that investment and the data they have in those systems to drive labeling directly. This allows them to automate printing and reduce manual effort. At the same time these companies don’t have to worry about replicating data to another location purely for labeling purposes. The idea is to cut out any manual processes and at the same time allow companies to drive labeling directly from the system that they already have invested in. Also, having a source of truth for label data is essential for providing consistency and reducing mislabeling. With a source of truth you already have all the information that needs to appear on labels existing in enterprise applications to A BLUEPRINT FOR LABELING SUCCESS: A SEVEN PART SERIES CAN YOU INTEGRATE LABELING WITH YOUR ENTERPRISE APPLICATIONS? Scott Johnson is Director of Prod- uct Management at Loftware. Mr. Johnson maintains a unique blend of enterprise labeling soft- ware and hardware experience. He is responsible for developing and implementing product strategy and ensuring labeling requirements are translated into product capabilities for large, global companies. Mr. Johnson has served companies including Hewlett-Packard and Xerox and is an expert in print technologies. INTERVIEW WITH SCOTT JOHNSON, DIRECTOR OF PRODUCT DEVELOPMENT, LOFTWARE, INC. 13 streamline your labeling process. If you either rely on manual data entry or replication of data there’s a risk for errors to occur in process. At the end of the day a source of truth, connected and integrated with labeling helps ensure accu- racy of the labels being produced. Another advantage of integrating labeling to enterprise applications is that it enables a closed loop process for trace- ability through the supply chain. By sourcing a label from an application or repository, that contains all key product and transactional data, companies can maintain traceability as an item moves through the supply chain, for example as it is scanned from one location to the next. This allows customers to go back to the source of the data to have the visibility of items as they go through supply chain. Q. WHICH TYPES OF APPLICATIONS ARE COMPANIES INTEGRATING WITH LABELING? There is a wide range of different enterprise applications and data repositories that could be integrated with labeling. Ultimately, those systems simply reflect the data that needs to appear on the label. So, the data can come from almost any type of application, whether it’s regulatory data that comes from various regulatory databases, or data that comes from a PLM system or a content management system or something like SAP’s EHS module. Most often, transactional information will flow from an ERP system, warehouse management or supply chain management application, or even an MES application. These systems provide a wide range of data that may appear on the label including customer, product, manufacturing, and inventory information as well as transactional data, such as lot and batch numbers, work orders or PO numbers. It’s really a case-by-case situation as far as what types of applications are used to integrate to labeling. There are dif- ferent systems that integrate in different ways with different technologies. So what’s really important is that you have a vehicle to integrate with all those different systems. What’s critical is to be able to integrate to the complete range of sources for labeling, data and images. If you can’t access the data you need, then you run in to a situation where you’re limited in terms of what information can appear on a label or what’s worse, you need to manually add information to labels which can dramatically increases labeling errors. Q. ARE THERE CASES WHERE INTEGRATION TO MORE THAN ONE APPLICATION OR REPOSITORY IS REQUIRED? There are definitely cases where you need to integrate with more than one application or repository. The first and most obvious case is when you’ve got multiple different types of data that exist in different systems or applications. It could be regulatory data in one system and transactional data in another system. It also could be important when you’ve got a centralized deployment of an enterprise application and have regional locations where labeling is being performed locally. In some cases you may need transactional data from the centralized system but also need more localized information, such as language specific components or production information that needs to be retrieved from a local ©2015 Loftware, Inc. All Rights Reserved. All other marks are the property of their respective owners. • www.loftware.com 14 system or repository. Ultimately you may need to marry the two sets of data together so that you’re getting exactly what you need to appear on the label. Integrating with more than one application is also critical in helping to support business continuity. This would be true when a connection with a local system as a backup provides a vehicle for continuous production of labels in case the connection to the centralized system is lost. The other case where you might need to integrate to more than one application is when global organizations are grow- ing and acquiring other businesses. When this happens companies may need to integrate different enterprise solutions and data sources. It is quite often the case where businesses need to leverage their existing systems with net new systems to provide the data needed to deliver complete labels. Having flexible integration capabilities to support these scenarios today and tomorrow is important in enabling companies to grow and scale. Q. HOW CAN INTEGRATED LABELING SUPPORT LABELING CONSISTENCY AND IMPROVE SUPPLY CHAIN EFFICIENCY? Integrated labeling supports consistency and supply chain efficiency in multiple ways. From a consistency perspec- tive, integrating labeling with enterprise applications and the key sources of truth for label data ensures labeling accu- racy. When you’re working in an environment with multiple dispersed locations around the globe, driving label printing from your transactional system through an integrated labeling solution helps to ensure you’re going to get the same information that you need on those labels whether you’re printing in Singapore or Switzerland. When we look at labeling from an efficiency perspective, integrated labeling ultimately is important for automating many of the manual processes that often cause labeling errors and inconsistency of labeling across the supply chain. Having an integrated solution enables you to drive labeling from the transactions that occur with the business pro- cesses that you already have in place, rather than having to create a non-value added processes this is specific to labeling. This approach means driving labeling from existing processes rather than having a disconnected approach where you’re performing one function that’s specific to a transaction and business process and another process that’s central to producing labels. In short what we’re talking about is being able to automate the labeling process from your existing business processes. 15 How can you optimize mission-critical labeling to enable your business to succeed in today’s evolving global supply chain? This Q&A is part of a seven part series that addresses key questions that companies should consider when they review ensuing requirements and current capabilities of their existing barcode labeling solutions. The series will explore all of the labeling essentials involved in creating a “Blueprint for Labeling Success.” We’ll question a panel of Loftware labeling experts to take a closer look at how companies today utilize Enterprise Labeling Solutions to meet complex labeling challenges while scaling to meet global labeling requirements. When it comes to managing your label creation and update process, it’s important to enable business users with the ability to manage label design. Companies are relying on labeling solutions to provide business users the flexibility to create and update labels to meet evolving requirements in a timely manner to improve custom- er responsiveness while eliminating dependencies on scarce IT resources. To further aid in the labeling process they are leveraging What You See Is What You Get (WYSI- WYG) design and browser-based capabilities enabling business users to streamline the labeling process. Implementing an Enterprise Labeling Solution empowers business users, reduces the use of costly IT resources and improves the speed and efficiency of the label design process. Q. WHAT ARE THE MOST IMPORTANT ASPECTS OF LABEL DESIGN? The single most important aspect of label design is the ability to convey the correct information, to the correct audience, in a consistent and concise manner. The two key words here are “correct” and “consistent.” When labels are inaccurate or informa- tion is out of date, serious breakdowns in the supply chain can occur. This is often very costly in financial terms, but can also damage customer relationships and even the corporate brand. Consistency is valuable in terms of branding as companies want to present a common face to the market. At the same time, ensuring labeling consistency is critical in terms of supporting efficiency up and down the supply chain. Global A BLUEPRINT FOR LABELING SUCCESS: A SEVEN PART SERIES CAN YOU EMPOWER USERS TO EASILY CREATE AND UPDATE LABELS? ABZ Lori Thorp is Product Manager at Loftware. With extensive experience in implementing enterprise labeling solutions, Ms. Thorp leverages her knowledge as a Product Manager for Loftware. She works closely with large global companies to ensure labeling solutions meet their evolving business requirements. Ms. Thorp has over 30 years experience in electronics con- tract manufacturing and process development with a focus on MES (Manufacturing Execution Systems) and enterprise labeling solutions. INTERVIEW WITH LORI THORP, PRODUCT MANAGER, LOFTWARE, INC. 16 companies often struggle with inconsistent label designs across different locations and facilities, which contributes to labeling inconsistency and results in more time and energy required to create and update labels. Q. WHAT ARE THE ADVANTAGES OF ALLOWING BUSINESS USERS TO MANAGE LABEL DESIGN? Business users are the closest to the labeling process and are on the frontlines, interacting with customers and managing the business’ labeling requirements. When business users need to rely on IT for label design creation and updates, they must first make sure resources are available and then make sure that they truly understand the business requirements. When business users own the label design process, they don’t have to wait for scarce IT resources and at the same time are able to remove a layer of translation to achieve the required label design. When there is last min- ute change to customer specific labeling requirement, such as use of a different label format or symbology, a business user can make that change without waiting for IT or a release window. When the business user has the capability to enact changes independently, without requiring service from IT, they’re able to reduce time and cost in the labeling process while improving customer responsiveness. Q. WHAT ROLE DO YOU SEE THE IT DEPARTMENT PLAYING IN LABEL DESIGN? IT plays a critical role in the labeling process, although it doesn’t need to involve actual label design. Their job is to provide the labeling system with the data it needs, when it’s needed. Having IT manage the data is imperative. They are the keepers of the sources of truth for the data that’s appears on a label. To access the sources of truth, IT needs to identify and maintain the integration points with the ERP system or other enterprise applications or repositories that connect with the labeling solution. These data integration points are independent of label design. Just as you don’t want IT to worry about label design, you don’t want label designers to worry about whether they’re accessing the right data. Beyond being the keeper and integrator of the data, IT’s role with respect to label design is essential, ensuring access, security, and connectivity. But in terms of an actual direct role with respect to designing labels, the best practice is for IT to cede control over label creation and maintenance to the business. Q. WHAT ARE BEST PRACTICES FOR ALLOWING RAPID LABEL CHANGE? The need to make rapid label changes is one of the major reasons for empowering business users to manage label de- sign. However, while you want to empower business users, you also want to ensure consistency and validation for the labeling process. Best practices would be to implement a plan that dictates what the process is for making changes so that they are not made on the fly. Without a formal labeling process the business users could act in an ad hoc manner and unintentionally jeopardize labeling accuracy and put the business at risk for fines, customer dissatisfaction, and brand consistency. ©2015 Loftware, Inc. All Rights Reserved. All other marks are the property of their respective owners. • www.loftware.com 17 Best practices involve defining roles, providing proper access control and maintaining a sound work flow process. This means ensuring that the right people have the right access at the right time and that individual roles are clearly defined so that anyone involved in the label process fully understands exactly what they need to do and when. Versioning can also be implemented to ensure tight control over which versions of labels are being updated and which ones are production ready and can be implemented in a live production environment. It also provides an import mechanism to maintain a comprehensive audit of which version of a label was printed historically, which is vital when events like recalls occur. Q. WHAT IS THE BEST APPROACH FOR DESIGNING LABELS TO MEET CORPORATE STANDARDS? There are many parties involved in labeling since it’s composed of so many elements that intersect operations, regu- latory, marketing and brand, as well as production. An approach must be defined to include all of the key stakeholders involved in your labeling process. In addition to representing various departments and roles, it is also important to consider geographic and language requirements based on the regions where production, distribution and consumption takes place. Additionally, it’s important to factor in supply chain activities. What information needs to be provided, at which junc- tures, as goods move through the supply chain? Can all that information be contained in one label, or are there points where unique, stand-alone labels are required? The most important consideration here is making sure that all of the stakeholders involved are providing input. Utilizing an Enterprise Labeling approach offers best practices for maintain- ing these brand standards and responding to evolving business requirements. 18 How can you optimize mission-critical labeling to enable your business to succeed in today’s evolving global supply chain? This Q&A is part of a seven part series that addresses key questions that companies should consider when they review ensuing requirements and current capabilities of their existing barcode labeling solutions. The series will explore all of the labeling essentials involved in creating a “Blueprint for Labeling Success.” We’ll question a panel of Loftware labeling experts to take a closer look at how companies today utilize Enterprise Labeling Solutions to meet complex labeling challenges while scaling to meet global labeling requirements. As global companies continue to expand their presence internationally, they must consider how to efficiently deploy and maintain labeling solutions so they can scale seamlessly. The focus, even when deploying solutions in a distributed fashion, is to continue to maintain the ability to leverage common data sources, components and configurations across sites. This is essential to handle the rigors of global infrastructures, allowing users to manage outages and connectivity issues, while providing high availability, failover and disaster recovery capabilities. The advent of multi-tier architectures and browser-based labeling solutions as offered with Enterprise Labeling Solutions provide even more flexibility to enable centralized and decentralized deployment options. Q. WHAT ARE THE BIGGEST CHALLENGES OF MAINTAINING LA- BELING ACROSS A GLOBAL OPERATION? It can be a monumental task to maintain labeling across a global operation. Com- panies that are global in nature have different operations and labeling requirements based on their products and the requirements of the countries and regions that they serve. So, part of the challenge of maintaining labeling across a global operation is to understand the unique requirements in each region. As companies grow they frequently inherit labeling systems that are unique to a particular location and may be either packaged or homegrown applications. Although these systems might meet requirements at the local level, managing A BLUEPRINT FOR LABELING SUCCESS: A SEVEN PART SERIES CAN YOU SCALE AND MANAGE GLOBAL BARCODE LABELING? ABZ ABZ Rick Bodwell is Lead Solutions Engineer at Loftware. Mr. Bodwell maintains over 15 years experience in software engineering with a focus on Enterprise Labeling Solutions. He has served a vast array of large companies and specializes in labeling industry best practices. Mr. Bodwell has worked with global organizations to address a wide range of labeling require- ments including how to address evolving regulatory and customer requirements. INTERVIEW WITH RICK BODWELL, LEAD SOLUTIONS ENGINEER, LOFTWARE, INC. 19 labeling across a global supply chain becomes very difficult for a company that wants to have centralized control and manage labeling consistency, while keeping track what’s being done at the regional level. This becomes a big challenge in regard to duplication of effort. For instance, a company might have a hundred different locations across the world and those sites may have sim- ilar products but their products may be created, packaged and labeled differently in each region. Having so many disparate labeling systems means that there is a lack of consistency and so it becomes difficult to implement global changes to a brand, product or label format because the change would need to be replicated across all of those hun- dred sites. This is especially difficult when companies are looking to maintain consistency while reconciling the unique regulatory, customer and regional requirements at each location. Also, changes in permutations of labels can cause a significant duplication of effort and significant expense. Each region may spend significant money on localized IT or other valuable resources in maintaining labeling systems and updating labels. Although, this is a duplication of effort, and significant time and money could be saved if labeling was deployed and managed centrally. It is quite common for locations to want to maintain control labeling locally and have autonomy regarding decisions about the content and packaging of their products. However, these regions still gain val- ue from having a centralized resource that they can tap into to help support their deployment while ensuring alignment with global standards. Q. HOW CAN IMPLEMENTING AN ENTERPRISE LABELING SOLUTION HELP ADDRESS THESE CHALLENGES? The most substantial benefit in implementing an Enterprise Labeling Solution is the cost savings companies can achieve by not duplicating efforts across the globe. Using an Enterprise Labeling Solution allows a centralized ap- proach with the ability to allow for localized autonomy as appropriate. In most cases, the solution can be maintained centrally but still allow users access from around the world to log in and create a structure where they can make changes to labels as permitted and control the configuration of their local label printing devices. This allows everyone to be aligned while meeting the needs for the region where they’re conducting business. Companies are looking to maximize efficiency and minimize the cost of localized solutions while reducing the dupli- cation of effort. With an Enterprise Labeling approach, companies are able to access the same centralized data to reduce the necessary number of label permutations and ultimately cut back on duplication of efforts throughout the global supply chain. What this does is allow for the idea of label and package consolidation to meet global standards and it also brings in to play the idea of master templates. These templates are mostly locked down but can be modi- fied slightly to meet regional requirements while not forcing resources to create their own labels from scratch. In some cases companies have many thousands of templates, just staggering numbers of templates, because essentially the label is for the same product but the templates are being duplicated many, many times. 20 This approach also eliminates error prone manual labeling processes to substantially reduce the occurrence of mislabeling, which is not only costly but can delay response times and have a huge impact on customer satisfaction. Mislabeling also has a big impact on the corporate brand and can jeopardize customer trust and ultimately the cus- tomer relationship. Q. WHAT TYPE OF DEPLOYMENT MODELS ARE USED FOR LARGE SCALE, GLOBAL COMPANIES? The deployment model that is most often used by large, global organizations is to have a highly available centralized environment containing the master templates and controlling access to those templates. This also allows for different environments like test, development, QA, and production environments so that way all companies sites are staying in synch with master data. There are several benefits to adopting this model. Different centralized environments can have a sandbox envi- ronment where label templates can be continually evaluated for new products and new content, and they can be promoted to the next environment, QA or Production, keeping it in line with master data. You never want to have a new product label that makes its way into production without the formal review and approval cycles. If you had a label that was not ready to go live and it somehow finds its way onto the product floor, the business is at risk for fines and customer issues. When your labeling is standardized, even if it’s distributed versus centralized, it’s the same technology platform so the IT staff can support the product in a predictable fashion. Also, when there’s access to central environment there’s still opportunity to have a distributed copy of the solution for backup purposes. If for some reason you get cut off from corporate headquarters because of interruptions to the network, you still have a solution and print la- bels on demand, just in time, at the regional level. Having a standard solution that is supported both internally and by the software vendor is important and having a centralized, scalable approach to labeling is critical in managing large scale, global deployments. Q. HOW DOES A COMPREHENSIVE ENTERPRISE LABELING SOLUTION SIMPLIFY MAINTE- NANCE AND LIMIT IT INVOLVEMENT? Given the mission critical importance of labeling to a company’s supply chain, most infrastructures for enterprise labeling are redundant, backed up and highly available, and the resources and staff are trained and very knowledgeable about keeping the environment online, running, and in synch with the latest updates and patches. That way the down time is minimized and there’s less risk of someone taking down the entire solution or system which could happen more commonly in an approach where there’s local decision making. 21 When you’re limiting IT involvement, what you want to do is have a tiered structure like with the Enterprise Labeling model. With this approach, there are internal resources that have been trained in knowledge transfer and best prac- tices so they know the protocol to support the mission critical label printing. At the same time, companies have an IT staff that knows how to troubleshoot and support the labeling solution because the company has standardized on a single solution. The ability to enable business users to perform tasks ranging from label design to printer configuration also means that companies can simplify maintenance and limit IT involvement, especially in day-to-day operation. This can save the business a great deal of time and money. Q. WHAT ARE THE ADVANTAGES OF MODERN, MULTI-TIER ARCHITECTURES AND BROWS- ER-BASED LABELING SOLUTIONS? There are three main advantages of leveraging modern, multi-tier labeling solutions including scalability, flexibility and consistency. From a scalability perspective a multi-tier architecture enables companies to add more processing power as needed by adding more hardware and application servers to meet specific processing requirements. Flexibility is also inherit in this type of solution, enabling you to extend secure, browser-based access to anyone in your organiza- tion or supply chain that needs to take part in the labeling process. Lastly, from a consistency perspective, modern enterprise applications like ERP systems share a similar architecture which makes deploying an Enterprise Labeling Solution in a company’s existing infrastructure simpler and makes integration with transaction systems responsible for driving label data easier as well. Q. WHY IS IT SO IMPORTANT FOR AN ENTERPRISE LABELING SOLUTION TO FACTOR IN HIGH AVAILABILITY, FAILOVER AND DISASTER RECOVERY CAPABILITIES? Maintaining production uptime and ensuring business continuity is essential. If label printing goes down that means locations aren’t able to manufacture, move, inventory, or ship products. For global organizations, an interruption to business operation and their supply chain is unacceptable and extremely costly. That’s why it’s very important to have an Enterprise Solution that takes into account the capability to have high availability, to be able to replicate failover and be seamlessly redundant through the most modern technology, to have the ability to maintain itself and make label- ing highly available so it won’t go down and mission critical operations are not impacted. The cost of ten minutes of downtime by some companies can be measured in the millions and ensuring uninterrupted label production is vital to enabling continuous operations. 22 How can you optimize mission-critical labeling to enable your business to succeed in today’s evolving global supply chain? This Q&A is part of a seven part series that addresses key questions that companies should consider when they review ensuing requirements and current capabilities of their existing barcode labeling solutions. The series will explore all of the labeling essentials involved in creating a “Blueprint for Labeling Success.” We’ll question a panel of Loftware labeling experts to take a closer look at how companies today utilize Enterprise Labeling Solutions to meet complex labeling challenges while scaling to meet global labeling requirements. Mission-critical labeling plays an essential role in today’s global, complex, and fast paced business environment. However, to support continuous operations, busi- nesses must be able to rely on 24x7 support for labeling. Also, with the increasing amount of labeling complexity driven by customer and regulatory requirements, it’s important to be able to tap into industry specific knowledge and best practices, so that labeling can be both configured and optimized to meet each company’s needs. Enterprise Labeling Solutions allow customers to receive tailored service and support direct from the solution manufacturer, ensuring maximum production uptime, reducing the need for costly IT resources and increasing overall supply chain efficiency. Q. WHY ARE SERVICES AN IMPORTANT PART OF IMPLEMENTING AND MAINTAINING AN ENTERPRISE LABELING SOLUTION? In order to optimize the capabilities of an Enterprise Labeling Solution, companies should take advantage of the best practices advice and insights and knowledge transfer that can only come from companies that design, develop and implement the software they’re using. These companies possess industry-specific knowledge, technical expertise and offer ongoing training and support. A BLUEPRINT FOR LABELING SUCCESS: A SEVEN PART SERIES CAN YOU OFFER SUPPORT AND BEST PRACTICES FOR GLOBAL LABELING? Michael Thornton is Director of Technical Services and Support at Loftware. Mr. Thornton has over 25 years management experience in the printing and labeling industries. He serves as an advocate for customers and is responsible for overseeing project management, systems implementations and technical support for enterprise labeling solutions. Mr. Thornton works closely with companies to ensure that best practices for running and supporting labeling solutions across their global operations. INTERVIEW WITH MICHAEL THORNTON, DIRECROR OF TECHNICAL SERVICES AND SUPPORT, LOFTWARE, INC. 23 In many situations customers move from home-grown or other 3rd party systems so implementation and training becomes a critical part of the transition to the new labeling solution. The right services and consulting will ensure that the right components are chosen, the right integrations put in place, the right business rules enacted, and the right data sources identified. Services can also help on an ongoing basis, as a company’s labeling needs change and as new market, industry, and regulatory challenges arise. The right set of services will help you optimize the use of an Enter- prise Labeling Solution and maximize the benefits you can derive from it. Another best practice is leveraging services to ensure that the labeling environment is configured to support a com- pany’s mission-critical and high volume labeling. Rather than having the customer install and configure the software, a best practices approach calls for the software provider to assist in configuring the labeling environment, which will most often consist of test environment, development environment, and production environments. These multiple environments are important to ensure that the appropriate processes can be followed for system updates as well as ensuring that changes can be properly staged into production environments. Q. WHAT ROLE DOES TRAINING PLAY? WHAT MAKES IT VITAL? Training is a critical step in educating users and administrators on the capabilities and options available to them that can be employed to best meet the labeling requirements for the business. And, getting that training directly from the people who developed the solution offers a real advantage. There are different types of training for different types of users. It’s important training is tailored so that the correct us- ers are being educated on capabilities that are relevant to the job function and that the level of knowledge they receive allows them to get the most out of the solution. Training can range from system administrator training that covers the install, the support, and troubleshooting of the solution to user training that focuses on designing labels and for those configuring systems, adding users, and adding permissions. Initial training takes place at implementation time so the users know exactly how to use the new system, how to design labels, how to print from it and how to trouble shoot issues. There is also ongoing training provided by the soft- ware manufacturer, which assists with the organization’s growth. This can take the form of a best practices refresher or training for new employees that need to understand how to best use the solution that is already in place. It’s also very important to offer training for new functionality for any new product releases. When a company upgrades and is provided with a lot of new enhancements it’s important that they’re trained on how to use new capabilities to maximize your business benefit. 24 Gaining the proper insight and making sure the right people understand individual roles is critical to making sure an Enterprise Labeling Solution is running optimally and that the business is getting the most out of an investment. Q. WHY IS TECHNICAL SUPPORT SO IMPORTANT TO SUCCESSFUL ENTERPRISE LABELING DEPLOYMENTS? Given the mission critical nature of labeling companies can’t afford downtime or anything that slows or impacts pro- duction. When companies are looking for assistance, they need answers that are timely and accurate. Also, for many organizations with continuous operations, they require that those answers be available 24/7/365. No business wants to be faced with a production down issue, while waiting for Monday morning to resolve a printer issue. This is why it is so important to partner with someone who fully understands and can troubleshoot the labeling. This provider must know how to react quickly and efficiently regardless of the day or time and independent of where your business is in the world. The only way to get the right answers at the right time is to partner directly with the solution manufacturer since they know the solution inside out. A smooth transition to support is an essential part of the post-implementation hand-off from services. This must be a two-way transition. Users need to know who to call, when to call, and what to expect from the technical support center. On the other hand, the technical support team needs to know and have documented every detail of a company’s imple- mentation. They need to know what components in use, what integrations are at play, details about the print hardware environment, any other nuances from the implementations as well as who the key contacts are for the labeling solu- tion at the company. Without the right type of technical support and a solid understanding of the solution and its technologies, compa- nies put continuous operations at risk and may lose valuable time and energy troubleshooting issues. This is why it’s so important to have access to technical support with extensive knowledge of the solution and it’s capabilities, backed up by a knowledge base, and an integrated team from software engineering. In addition to technical depth, the support team must appreciate that downtime is expensive, and that, when a customer in distress calls, respon- siveness matters. Q. HOW DOES INDUSTRY KNOWLEDGE AND DOMAIN EXPERIENCE FACTOR INTO DELIVER- ING WORLD-CLASS SERVICES AND SUPPORT FOR LABELING? With all of today’s regulatory and compliance issues which have an impact on labeling, such as GHS for handling chemicals or UDI for the identification of Medical Devices through the supply chain, it’s important for providers to have specialized, industry specific knowledge. These regulations and emerging standards are impacting a wide range of 25 About Loftware - Loftware, Inc. is the global market leader in Enterprise Labeling Solutions with more than 5,000 customers in over 100 countries. Offering the industry’s most comprehensive labeling solution, Loftware’s enterprise software integrates SAP®, Oracle® and other enteprise applcations to produce mission-critical barcode labels, documents, and RFID Smart tags across the supply chain. Loftware’s design, native print, and built-in business rules functionality drives topline reve- nue, increases customer satisfaction, and maximizes supply chain efficiency for customers. With over 25 years of industry leadership, Loftware’s Enterprise Labeling Solutions and best practices enable leading companies to meet their customer specific and regulatory requirements with unprecedented speed and agility. Loftware, with thousands of customers worldwide, is the foremost authority and global market software leader in delivering innovative business solutions for enterprise labeling industries around the world and labeling is a specific area where constant change is necessary to comply with evolving requirements. Companies are looking for solutions and providers that will assist them in meeting compliance so they can avoid fines, disruptions to the supply chain and loss of business. True providers of Enterprise Labeling Solutions maintain industry knowledge and domain experience, which offers a level of service and support that allows companies to meet unique requirements. These solution providers offer a unique understanding regarding industry regulations and other nuances, which enables them to tailor products, ser- vices and support. Having access to this type of world-class service and support expedites troubleshooting and helps companies meet specific needs and stay ahead of compliance deadlines.