Client Overview
Bush Brothers is a family-owned American food company founded in 1908 and headquartered in Knoxville, Tennessee. Best known for Bush’s Original Baked Beans and its iconic brand presence, the company manages a wide portfolio of canned bean products across multiple SKUs, packaging formats, and production sites.
Bush Brothers operates in the highly regulated Food Industry where accuracy, consistency, and timely execution of packaging artwork are business critical.
To support increasing operational complexity and reduce risk across packaging workflows, Bush Brothers adopted ManageArtworks’ Artwork Management System (AMS) with an integrated Copy Manager.
The Challenge
Before ManageArtworks, Bush Brothers was using multiple systems to manage artwork workflows and maintain product and packaging data. While this setup was functional, it still involved a fair amount of manual data handling and cross-checking to keep everything aligned.
As their portfolio grew, the team saw an opportunity to simplify and strengthen the process. They wanted better visibility across artwork and packaging lifecycles, tighter control over versions, and a more reliable way to connect SKUs, packaging materials, and production sites. Most importantly, they were looking to move to a single, integrated workflow that could bring copy and artwork together—reducing duplication, improving confidence in label accuracy, and making daily work more efficient.
ManageArtworks Solution
To streamline their artwork workflow, Bush Brothers implemented ManageArtworks’ Artwork Management System with an integrated Copy Manager. The goal was to create a single system-driven packaging workflow to connects copy, artwork, and product data.
Every artwork project begins in ManageArtworks by gathering required artwork inputs with copy being the most important. With the Copy Manager in place, Pack copy is captured, reviewed, and approved at the start of the project. Copy approval tasks are now embedded directly into the artwork workflow across iterations and different stages of the flow. The approved copy becomes the single source of truth for downstream design which ensures design teams always work with approved, compliant copy.
The ManageArtworks workflow integrates directly with Bush’s ERP system to pull core product information. The Formulation system is also integrated and retrieves the ingredients and nutrition data required for labeling. By sourcing data directly from these systems, manual data entry is eliminated. Label accuracy is improved as changes in formulation or product data are reflected consistently in the artwork process. Once the artwork is designed and uploaded, built-in proofing tools enable online review and annotation. Checklists ensure all regulatory and brand requirements are verified, and artwork comparison tools allow reviewers to quickly identify changes between versions.
Adoption and Usage
Bush Brothers approached adoption with a focus on aligning the system closely to existing ways of working, while also improving consistency across teams. The implementation followed a phased rollout, allowing different functions to be onboarded with adequate training.
Compared to the earlier setup, the artwork approval workflow now includes more teams, improving visibility and shared ownership. Despite changes in how requests were initiated and managed, adoption was smooth, with minimal resistance from users. The system also helped formalize prerequisites for artwork initiation. External designers were gradually onboarded as well, with the transition managed without disrupting ongoing projects.
Overall, ManageArtworks became part of the regular team operations rather than an additional layer, supporting daily artwork coordination across functions.
Overall Impact
Since go-live, Bush Brothers has seen clearer structure and predictability across packaging artwork workflows. Integration with ERP and the formulation system has significantly reduced manual data entry and duplicate effort, while improving confidence in data accuracy. With this, teams are able to progress artwork through reviews more quickly, supporting faster turnaround from initiation to approval.
Artwork review cycles have become more efficient, with fewer review meetings and less back-and-forth clarification. This has allowed teams to focus on validating intended changes rather than repeatedly checking details. Early validation of pack copy has strengthened compliance confidence by ensuring accurate, verified information flows through the artwork process.
Most importantly, Bush Brothers has centralized its entire artwork workflow within ManageArtworks. Artwork project initiation, copy review and approval, artwork reviews and approvals, version control, status tracking and reporting now take place within a single system with no dependency on activities outside the workflow. This end-to-end visibility has helped them maintain tighter control over artwork as volume and complexity continue to grow.
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