William Janeway
A new packaging approval workflow can remove weeks from your time to market. It can also fail quietly. People keep sending files by email, approvers skip steps, and six months later the new process exists mainly on paper.
The difference is rarely the workflow itself. It is how the rollout is planned.
At Collabra, we have helped FMCG brands redesign and implement artwork approval processes for more than 20 years, across portfolios with thousands of SKUs and 30+ markets. This guide shares the seven steps we follow when we plan a packaging approval workflow rollout, and the mistakes we see most often.
1. Define what the new workflow must fix
Start with the problem, not the tool. “We need a new approval workflow” is not a goal. “Approvals take too long and errors reach print” is.
Ask your team:
- Where do approvals get stuck today?
- Which errors keep coming back?
- Which deadlines are missed, and why?
- What does good look like in a year?
Collabra’s view: Write down two or three clear goals and get leadership to agree on them. These goals will guide every decision later, from how many approval stages you need to which projects go first.
2. Measure your current approval process
You cannot show improvement without a starting point. Before anything changes, collect a simple baseline:
- Approval lead time: from first draft to final sign-off
- Revision rounds: how many loops each artwork needs
- First-time-right rate: share of artworks approved without correction
- Errors after approval: issues found in proofing, on press or on shelf
Collabra’s view: Many brands skip this step because the data is scattered across emails and spreadsheets. Even a rough baseline from a sample of recent projects is better than none. It also helps win support for the rollout, because the cost of the current process becomes visible.
3. Map how approvals really work today
The official process and the real process are rarely the same. Interviews and a walk-through of a few recent projects usually reveal informal shortcuts, extra reviewers and steps nobody remembers adding.
Collabra’s view: Map the real flow, step by step, including every person involved and every place files are stored. In our assessments, this is often where the biggest surprises appear: approvers who review everything but own nothing, or critical checks that happen only when a specific person remembers.
4. Design the future workflow and roles
Now design the target process. Keep it as simple as your risk level allows. Decide:
- Stages: which steps every artwork must pass, from brief to print release
- Roles: who reviews what, with a clear scope for each approver
- Sequence: which reviews can run in parallel and which must happen in order
- Rules: deadlines per stage, escalation paths and who makes the final call
- Variants: a lighter path for small changes, a full path for new products
Collabra’s view: The most common design mistake is adding a reviewer for every concern. More approvers do not mean fewer errors. Give each approver a defined responsibility, such as regulatory text, claims or technical data, and one owner for the final release.
5. Run a pilot before the full rollout
Never roll out a new approval workflow to the whole portfolio at once. Choose a pilot that is real but contained: one brand, one category or one market, with a mix of new products and simple updates.
During the pilot, watch for:
- Steps people skip or work around
- Stages where artworks wait the longest
- Questions that come up again and again
- Feedback from external vendors, such as agencies and printers
Collabra’s view: Treat the pilot as a test of the process, not of the people. Adjust roles, deadlines and templates based on what you learn. A few weeks of real projects reveal more than months of planning.
6. Train people and manage the change
A new workflow changes how people work every day. Without support, they fall back to old habits, especially under deadline pressure.
Plan for:
- Role-based training: approvers, project managers and vendors need different guidance
- Simple documentation: one-page guides per role, not long manuals
- Internal champions: people in each team who can answer questions quickly
- Clear switch-off: a date after which the old route, such as email approvals, is no longer accepted
Collabra’s view: Change management is the part of a rollout that most often gets too little time and budget. In our experience, it is also the part that decides whether the new workflow is still in use a year later. Remember to onboard external vendors too. Your approval workflow only works if agencies, pre-press houses and printers follow it.
7. Roll out in waves and keep measuring
After the pilot, expand in planned waves, for example by brand, category or region. Each wave should start with training and end with a short review.
Keep tracking the same KPIs as your baseline. Compare results per wave and share progress with the teams involved. Visible improvement is one of the strongest motivators for adoption.
Collabra’s view: A rollout does not end when the last team goes live. Review the workflow regularly, remove steps that add no value and adjust when your portfolio, markets or regulations change.
Common mistakes in approval workflow rollouts
From our work with brand owners, these are the mistakes we see most often:
- Starting with the tool instead of the process. Software cannot fix unclear roles.
- Copying the old process into a new system. The same bottlenecks simply move online.
- Too many approvers. Responsibility gets diluted and approvals slow down.
- No baseline. Without data, nobody can prove the rollout worked.
- Forgetting vendors. External partners keep using old routes if no one onboards them.
- No switch-off date. Two parallel processes create more confusion than one old one.
How Collabra helps brands roll out approval workflows
Collabra is a packaging partner for FMCG brands. With more than 20 years of experience managing complex packaging portfolios, we know that a successful approval workflow depends as much on people and governance as on technology.
We support approval workflow rollouts through our three-step approach:
- Analyze. We assess your current workflows, bottlenecks, governance and risk exposure, and set a baseline you can measure against.
- Optimize. We design a future-ready approval process with clear stages, roles and rules that scale with your portfolio.
- Enable. We implement the new workflow through structure, digital tools and change management, including pilots, training and vendor onboarding. We work with your existing packaging platform, or with Cway, the artwork lifecycle platform that grew out of Collabra’s own operations work.
Our Strategy team leads process design and change management, while our Production team keeps artwork, proofing and print moving during the transition, so your launches do not stop while the process changes.
See how we speed up artwork and approvals, or how we help brands transform artwork operations from the ground up.
Planning a new approval workflow? Talk to one of our packaging experts.
