Cumberland Packing Corp. is a family owned and operated business, serving the public for over 60 years. Cumberland’s product lines include the premium In The Raw® family of products, as well as the iconic Sweet’N Low® brand. The company produces and markets six brands in 64 countries across the globe and sells its products to food retailers and manufacturers. Cumberland’s approach to artwork management has evolved over the 60+ years the company has been in business. They started by printing their own packets in-house, and later worked with external agencies and printers for design and production.
Today, three internal teams – the Brand, Internal Designer and Label Review Teams – work together to update packaging and coordinate production of over 100 SKUs domestically and internationally. Each product typically has three pieces: the packet, the retail package and corrugate box. The consumer-facing product and packaging is one of the most important elements of Cumberland’s business and being able to quickly and accurately update packaging information is a business-critical process. In their quest to create a more efficient, automated review process, Cumberland decided to implement Loftware Smartflow.
Cumberland’s Artwork Management process was very email-dependent. The Brand Team would email a PDF around for approval, gather all of the comments (also submitted via email) and then go back to the designer with changes. Each change involved multiple rounds of reviews. The process was completely manual and it needed to be duplicated for each SKU. Cumberland wanted a workflow system that could help them digitize this review and approval process. They investigated using their existing documentation system; however, they quickly realized that it wasn’t purpose-built. They were familiar with Loftware’s Enterprise Labeling solution, and when they found out there was an equivalent for Artwork Management, the Brand Team was eager to try it. Using Smartflow, Cumberland was able to centralize all of their workflow approvals and digital assets for their various brands onto one system.
Another challenge Cumberland experienced was a lack of visibility regarding the latest artwork revisions. There were times when departments didn’t have the latest version and printed something that was outdated. This could end up costing the company $100,000s in reprinting costs. Now, Smartflow provides instant visibility to the correct artwork version. Cumberland also uses Smartflow’s Digital Asset Library (DAL) as a secondary resource for storing all packaging artworks, images, die lines and more. Once an artwork is approved, it is uploaded to the system. This makes it easy for all departments to access accurate and approved packaging artwork, and to ensure that the organization is always using the latest version. This also reduces the burden on the Marketing department, as they no longer need to spend time answering requests for the latest versions of artwork files.
Pertanto, il nostro obiettivo era implementare un processo di gestione integrata delle etichette che garantisse etichette accurate e integrità dei dati.
David Gordon
Chief Operating Officer
The company’s brand managers spent a great deal of their time putting a project together, collecting responses and chasing people to get the feedback needed. With Smartflow, they now have full visibility across all aspects of the process, as well as accountability with a system that highlights individual progress to keep everyone on track. The fact that each task is time stamped within the system has improved the speed of review. In fact, Cumberland reduced the time of artwork project approval by over 60% after implementing Smartflow.
Since Cumberland markets its products in 64 countries across the globe, they needed to produce and update packaging information in multiple languages. In fact, the majority of their international packages contain externally sourced information in three to four languages. It was a challenge to gather all the packaging information they needed up-front. Now, they can include those stakeholders in the process and assign project tasks to provide the necessary information at the right time. Cumberland also uses Smartflow to manage their translation processes. Smartflow contains a central phrase library that stores common phrases and translations in one location. The library integrates directly with Smartflow projects and provides a single source for all packaging copy in an unlimited number of languages. Using this tool, the team can track and manage all translations and eliminate costly re-translations.
