In today’s global supply chain, the colors used in labeling can be just as communicative and important as the words on it or the label data. It’s no longer just important to show a pretty label on a finished product—demand for color labeling has moved beyond finished goods and businesses are beginning to see the importance of using color labeling throughout the entire supply chain.
 
The need to support color label printing is becoming prevalent in a variety of industries but is especially notable the medical device space where it has become critically important for grouping and identifying product and managing inventory for large global enterprises. Also, for many industries, color labeling is important to meet evolving customer and corporate branding requirements. Additionally, some government regulations, which require the use of color, are leading businesses to completely overhaul the way they identify and label products.
 
This is all further driving investments in color labeling. With these impending changes, it’s becoming increasingly important to have a solution in place that allows companies to quickly and easily add color to their labels and adjust to shifting circumstances. Therefore, as customers’ demands change, companies must evolve their labeling strategies right alongside their products and processes to avoid any disruptions in their supply chain.
 
Enterprise labeling solutions that support color label printing in an automated fashion have proven to be indispensable for doing business in today’s global supply chain. Implementing an enterprise labeling approach, which offers the power and flexibility to support complex, global and high volume labeling, allows firms to quickly and easily create color labels to improve usability and brand recognition and most important, safety, without all the effort, cost, and waste associated with using pre-printed stock. In this article, we will take a closer look at some of the reasons color labeling is increasingly in demand, and how the right enterprise labeling solution can provide everything a business needs to meet this rising demand.
 
Meeting Customer Branding and Use Requirements
Today, companies are placing even more importance on the value of their brand. As a result, they are demanding more than ever that labels reflect the colors that are fundamental to that brand. But placement of the brand doesn’t stop at the product—it’s also important that it’s represented properly throughout the supply chain on shipping labels, cartons, and crates. This practice enhances brand awareness on multiple levels and reminds customers who they are working with, which is useful for drumming up repeat business.
 
Of course, brand logos often consist of specific designs and colors. Color is an important aspect of most brand names and color labeling provides companies with a better chance to represent the full brand. In fact, a growing body of research suggests that the color of your logo can actually say more about your company than you think. If you’ve found that your logo’s specific look has a particular resonance with people, you shouldn’t alter it. Instead, standardize it across all corporate labels and documents. Enlisting this practice can also provide a simple anti-counterfeit measure. Counterfeiting can damage a brand’s image resulting in lost revenues and, most importantly, can lead to significant health and safety concerns. Companies can work to combat counterfeiting with color consistency—providing a key attribute for identifying a specific brand.
 
The demand for color printing doesn’t stop at branding requirements. As mentioned, the use of color labeling has become critically important for grouping and identifying product and managing inventory for large global enterprises. In many industries such as medical device, labels that include color are becoming increasingly important in helping to identify variations of product. These labels commonly contain color codes and graphics that make it easier to distinguish between brands, sizes, and product models, ultimately offering substantial timesaving and safety measures for storing and identifying proper inventory.
 
Also, as technology advances and more viable hardware solutions become available for color printing, it’s clear that customers will want to benefit from these improved capabilities. Loftware’s Annual Top 5 Trends surveyshows that today’s global companies are outlining plans to increase the purchasing of enterprise software and color print technology sufficient to meet their color labeling requirements. Nearly 60 percent of respondents claimed they would purchase additional color printers this year and 57 percent of those surveyed identified branding as a business driver for color labeling.
 
Advantages Over Pre-Printed Label Stock
One would think that pre-printing label stock in large quantities is the best way to ensure that a business always has enough labels on hand. But what happens when those labels are no longer needed? What if the information on those labels becomes outdated or is no longer applicable due to regulatory changes? What if you need to quickly respond to a customer’s demands for a shift in color or a new requirement? What about the rising costs to maintain multiple levels of different label stock?
 
There are substantial inefficiencies and significant costs associated with using pre-printed stock for color labeling. When manufacturers rely on pre-printed labels, any type of change or label variation means existing labels must be switched out, resulting in lost time and reduced efficiencies. Being able to rapidly fix a problem with a label, without having to reprint an entire batch, is an important advantage for any business. Many industries are learning that this type of on-demand printing is a preferable solution to pre-printed stock.
 
Also, pre-printing labels with pictograms can pose a particular challenge. Businesses that use multiple pictograms must print empty stock labels, which then need to be filled in—often a time-consuming process. Alternatively, they might choose to print multiple types of stock labels. In either case, pre-printing leads to inefficiency and waste, as it requires the printers to predict their needs far in the future while giving them little room for flexibility.
 
Using pre-printed stock for color labeling also requires companies to anticipate their needs and store vast amounts of labels. Some companies have reported that they require up to 40,000 square feet of space simply to store label stock. There’s also significant waste associated with stored labels when changes are made and the existing stock becomes obsolete. This can easily happen when a warehouse full of old labels display an outdated logo or no longer comply with evolving regulations. It is a costly waste, and an avoidable one.
 
It’s clear that using pre-printed label stock can be time consuming and costly, yet in a recent Loftware survey, one third of the respondents claimed they are still using pre-printed stock but many are seeding alternative solutions to manage their color labeling. Implementing a solution that supports color labeling removes the need for pre-printed stock and allows companies to dynamically make changes to labels while enabling them to print specific labels at the time they are required. A centralized, on-demand enterprise labeling solution is well suited for dynamic color labeling, allowing companies to respond quickly to any customer or regulatory requirements.
 
Enabling Regulatory Compliance
A wide range of industries have seen governments make a steady push to increase safety through the use of better warning labels. While long chunks of text or black-and-white images can be easily missed or ignored, color labels stand out and demand attention. As such, new global rules are calling for colored symbols on labels, which can better indicate any crucial information that both handlers and customers in the supply chain need to know. A recent Top 5 Trends in Enterprise Labeling survey (which polled over 600 supply chain and IT professionals) showed that over 45 percent of respondents identified regulatory demands as a business driver for color labeling.
 
Also, in the paper, “Meta-Analyses of the Effectiveness of Warning Labels” published in the Journal of Public Policy & Marketing, researchers Jennifer Argo of the University of Alberta and Kelley Main of the University of British Columbia concluded that warning labels are effective in attracting consumer attention, and that labels using color or symbols noticeably boosted that effectiveness. Color labels can also solve other, less obvious problems associated with shipping dangerous goods. One example of this would be the advantage color offers for language barriers. It’s easier to convey a flammable hazard by creating a picture of bright red flames than writing about the danger in a dozen different languages.
 
Growing Demand For Software Solutions That Can Handle Color Printing
The need for color printing is becoming more pervasive as companies look to meet the challenges of the GHS (Globally Harmonized System of Classification and Labeling of Chemicals)and other regulations, reduce their dependence on pre-printed label stock, and adhere to evolving brand standards and customer requirements. Printers that accommodate color labeling are important, but they alone cannot help businesses be more responsive with labeling. It’s important to have a standardized and centralized labeling solution that supports high-volume, automated printing, as well as the capability to support rapid change for color labeling. Using an enterprise labeling solution that leverages native print drivers offers excellent performance, allowing users to minimize network traffic and bandwidth and reduce overall maintenance. This approach simplifies printer deployments so customers can drive color label printing without requiring an install of Windows drivers across multiple environments.
 
Native print drivers offer substantial time and cost savings for color label printing. These drivers, which reduce the size of print streams to dramatically increase print speed, simplify the printing process with fewer moving parts, enabling 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 a labeling solution as demand increases, which can result in significant cost savings.
 
The right enterprise labeling solution offers extensive native color print capabilities to support all types of color printing across a global enterprise. This approach empowers companies to deal with all of the nuances of today’s complex labeling requirements and regulations, providing the ability to support high levels of variability with speed, agility, and scalability to support all forms of regulatory and customer requirements.