Ekaterina Skalatskaia
Most brand owners do not create packaging artwork alone. A typical FMCG brand works with a design agency, a pre-press house, one or more printers, translation partners and sometimes a regulatory consultant. Each vendor is good at its own job. The problems appear in the gaps between them.
Artwork vendor governance is how you control those gaps. It defines who does what, which files are the truth, how quality is measured and what happens when something goes wrong.
At Collabra, we have worked inside packaging operations for more than 20 years. We have seen the same pattern many times: a brand adds vendors as it grows, but never sets clear rules for how they work together. The result is extra revision rounds, missed launch dates and, in the worst cases, recalls.
These seven questions are the ones our consultants ask first when we assess a brand’s packaging artwork process.
1. Who owns each step from brief to print?
Start with ownership. For every step in the artwork lifecycle, someone must be responsible, someone must approve, and others need to be informed.
In practice, ownership is often unclear in three places:
- Brief writing. Marketing assumes the agency will “figure it out”. The agency assumes the brief is complete.
- Final technical check. The pre-press house assumes the brand checked the text. The brand assumes pre-press did.
- Print sign-off. Nobody is sure who approves the final proof against the printer’s specs.
What we recommend: Map your process as a simple RACI (Responsible, Accountable, Consulted, Informed) per step. Share it with every vendor. When our consultants run this exercise, brands often discover that two vendors are doing the same check, while a third, critical check is done by nobody.
2. Is there one source of truth for approved artwork?
If your approved files live in email attachments, shared drives and vendor FTP folders, you do not have a source of truth. You have several competing versions.
This is one of the most common root causes of packaging errors we see. A printer receives a file that was approved last month, but not the one that was corrected last week.
What we recommend: Decide where master files and approved versions live, and make that the only place vendors can pull from. It can be an artwork management platform, a DAM or a strictly controlled folder structure. Collabra works with any packaging platform your organisation already uses. Where a brand has no system in place, we often implement Cway, an artwork lifecycle platform that originated from our own operations work.
3. Do all vendors work from the same brief standard?
A weak brief is the most expensive document in packaging. Every missing detail turns into a revision round later.
When different brand managers write briefs in different ways, every vendor has to interpret them differently. Agencies fill gaps with assumptions. Pre-press houses ask questions that slow the project down.
What we recommend: Create one brief template that every project and every vendor uses. It should cover mandatory text, claims, languages, dielines, colour references, regulatory requirements and deadlines. Our design and strategy teams regularly help brands build these templates, because a standard brief is often the fastest way to reduce rework.
4. How are versions, access and changes controlled?
Vendor governance is also about access. Who can upload, edit, comment on or approve a file? When a vendor contract ends, is their access removed?
Version control matters just as much. Each change should be traceable: who changed what, when and why.
What we recommend: Set clear access levels per vendor role. Require that every change is linked to a comment or request. Make side-by-side version comparison a standard step before approval, so reviewers focus on what actually changed instead of rereading the whole artwork.
5. How do you measure vendor performance?
Many brands judge vendors by feeling: “the agency is slow” or “the printer is reliable”. Without data, those conversations go nowhere.
What we recommend: Agree a small set of KPIs with every vendor and review them regularly. The ones we find most useful are:
- First-time-right rate: share of artworks approved without correction
- Revision rounds per artwork: average number of loops before approval
- Lead time per step: time from brief to first draft, and from draft to approval
- Error source: where errors were introduced, not just where they were found
The last one is important. In our experience, many errors blamed on the printer were actually introduced much earlier, in the brief or in text approval.
6. Who is responsible for regulatory and compliance checks?
Mandatory information is where artwork mistakes become costly. Allergens, nutrition tables, legal text, recycling labels and new requirements under the EU Packaging and Packaging Waste Regulation (PPWR) all need a clear owner.
Vendors often assume compliance is the brand’s job. Brands often assume their agency knows the rules. Both can be wrong.
What we recommend: Write down which compliance checks each party performs and at which stage. Keep regulatory text in a controlled, approved library rather than retyping it for every project. Collabra’s consultants help brands set up these checkpoints, especially when regulations change and many SKUs need updating at the same time.
7. What happens when you add or replace a vendor?
Vendors change. A brand enters a new market, consolidates printers or moves to a new agency. If your governance depends on one vendor’s habits, every change becomes a risk.
What we recommend: Check three things in your vendor agreements:
- File ownership: you own the master artwork and source files, not the vendor.
- Portability: files and history can be handed over in a usable format.
- Onboarding: a new vendor can learn your process from documented standards, not from tribal knowledge.
A good test: could a new pre-press partner start working on your artwork next month without a long transition period? If not, your process depends too much on individuals.
How Collabra helps brands govern artwork vendors
Collabra is a packaging operations partner. We help brand owners bring structure to complex packaging processes through strategy, design and production services.
When we work on artwork vendor governance, we typically:
- Assess your current process, vendors and pain points
- Map ownership, file flows and approval steps across all vendors
- Redesign the process with clear standards, KPIs and compliance checkpoints
- Enable the new way of working, using the platform that fits your organisation
Want to know how your vendor setup performs today? Talk to one of our packaging experts.
