Common Workflow Bottlenecks Artwork Teams Should Fix

Your artwork is ready for printing, but at the very last minute, your team realizes that the approver did not approve the final version. Or that there are two versions titled “final”. Or that the feedback from the designer was not incorporated into the design. Challenges like these are a frequent sight. 

Today, artwork teams face more than creative challenges. The real struggle often lies in coordination, process breakdowns, and invisible delays. When these go unnoticed, they sap time and money and frustrate everyone from designers to legal experts. 

Solving workflow bottlenecks is critical to reducing recalls and rework and ensuring on-time product launches. Uncover the top workflow challenges artwork teams face and how ManageArtworks helps overcome them accurately. 

Top Bottlenecks Faced by Artwork Teams

Artwork challenges delay revenue, risk compliance, and strain team dynamics. Let’s look at the top artwork workflow bottlenecks teams commonly face: 

• Juggling Feedback from Multiple Stakeholders: Designs often circle between marketing, compliance, product managers, and external agencies. Without structure, feedback overlaps, contradicts, or misses the mark. Clarity suffers and revisions multiply, delaying launches while frustrating stakeholders. 
• Chasing Approvals and Constant Follow-ups: Reminders are ad hoc when approvers are unclear. Deadlines slip because someone doesn’t see an email or misses a version, dramatically impacting artwork timelines.
• Managing Multiple Versions of the Same Artwork: If one artwork version lives in Dropbox, another in email, and another on someone’s local drive, version confusion is certain. This causes duplication, leading to errors and costly rework.
• Meeting Tight Deadlines and Go-to-Market Pressures: Product launches must be quick and accurate. However, ensuring timely packaging, labeling, and regulatory reviews using outdated tools and approaches is difficult. Hold-ups are common, causing the entire go-to-market plan to fall behind.
• Ensuring Compliance: Labels must follow laws and rules: ingredient lists, claims, allergen warnings, language, and regulatory codes. Non-compliance means recalls, legal costs, and damage to reputation. But with manual and fragmented reviews, mistakes are bound to creep in. 

How ManageArtworks Becomes the Central Hub for Artwork Coordination

ManageArtworks addresses these bottlenecks by offering a central platform where every step of artwork production is visible, governed, and trackable. Here are some features that help tackle everyday workflow challenges:  

• Centralized Collaboration for Feedback: With ManageArtworks, stakeholders access the same source: artwork files, proof versions, and feedback threads. By replacing scattered emails and Google Drive with a unified repository, brands can streamline collaboration and ensure effective artwork management.  
• Automated Approval Workflows: ManageArtworks helps teams define who needs to approve what and in what order. Automatic reminders, serial or parallel review paths, and alerts reduce idle waiting, while alerts ensure no one misses a task. 
• Version Control and Audit Trails: ManageArtworks logs every change while making previous versions accessible. The information is there if someone needs to know “when did the label claim change?” or “who last approved the colour code?” This limits error and rework and accelerates launches. 
• Real-time Progress Tracking: With ManageArtworks, teams can track where any artwork is in its journey. They can see what is causing delays and what remains. Project dashboards expose blocked stages. Visibility removes guesswork. Borosil’s teams could monitor milestones and spot where delays were creeping in. 
• Built-in Compliance Tools: Teams that use ManageArtworks can enjoy embedded regulatory checklists, standardized spec guidelines, and proofing for claims/image licensing. This helps ensure compliance at every stage, reducing last-minute surprises. 

Success Story

Borosil provides a strong example of transformation. Its large, cross-functional team (45+ people) coordinated via email and Google Drive. Project details, timelines, and version histories were fragmented, compliance and approvals were slow, and errors were frequent. 

After implementing ManageArtworks, they achieved:

• A single source of truth for artwork files, feedback, and versions. 
• Structured workflows with automatic reminders. 
• Improved first-time approval rates, leading to fewer revisions. 
• Reduction in project delays by around 40%. 

Conclusion

Artwork management requires more than creative vision. It demands discipline, visibility, well-defined paths, and built-in checks. Every time feedback is delayed, versions are mixed, or approvals are stalled, brands lose more than time; they lose trust and opportunity.

If your team is juggling these issues, consider implementing a system that unifies collaboration, automates approvals, tracks versions in real time, and continuously enforces compliance. ManageArtworks demonstrates what’s possible when those pieces fall into place.