Loftware Smartflow^™

Loftware’s configurable and automated Smartflow Artwork Management Solution lowers costs, reduces mistakes, improves collaboration and reduces time to market. Smartflow transforms project management, streamlining the packaging concept to shelf process by bringing accountability and structure to the process. Loftware’s comprehensive Smartflow platform enables you to manage packaging artwork and the end-to-end business processes, mitigating risk, improving control, compliance, traceability and reducing the overall complexity of the artwork management process.

Streamline Processes Through The Product Lifecycle

Automate and streamline packaging management processes throughout your organization, enabling stakeholders to gain access to easily track and manage packaging artwork approvals and new product development smarter, faster and more efficiently. Smartflow’s configurable and scalable workflow framework offers an alternative to timely and costly manual processes, which include spreadsheets and email routing. Smartflow automates critical paths with real time intelligent workflows and clearly identifies projects which are behind schedule or at risk of running late, enabling you to take proactive corrective action and eliminate bottlenecks, improve time to market and ensure compliance.

Leverage Advanced Workflows to Manage Complex Projects

Smartflow enables you to break out master projects into an unlimited amount of smaller sub projects each with their own independent workflows and tasks. This provides improved visibility and allows parts of the packaging design project to be routed for approval and continue independently, even when there might be delays in other project areas. Managing separate sub tasks also allows for quick identification of project bottlenecks to significantly reduce timelines and ensure that your packaging artwork project is kept on schedule. 

Quickly and Easily Address Multi-Lingual Copy Requirements

Smartflow’s phrase management enables you to create a library of common, unlimited phrases and statements, which can then quickly and easily be translated into any number of languages. Create a single source for pre-approved phrase and translation content to integrate with your Smartflow projects to drive packaging consistency and compliance while reducing the time and cost associated with the translation process.

Take Control of Your Assets with Integrated Asset Management

Eliminate the need to always go searching for the most current image, dielines, artwork or tracking down files internally and externally from graphics providers and print houses, Smartflow offers a fully integrated, dynamic packaging asset library. Smartflow’s Digital Asset Library (DAL) supports full artwork version control of any type and size of digital asset with unlimited & configurable meta data and full integration with Smartflow projects, allowing you to eliminate potential reworks and regain total control of your assets.

Full Visibility for Budget and Resource Planning

Estimate and track actual time and cost allocation ahead of initiation and throughout each stage of your packaging development lifecycle. Real-time tracking enables you to drive time and cost efficiencies throughout the project and a full audit history of performance allows you identify training requirements and improve packaging design processes.

Dynamic Platform to Track and Manage Changes

Smartflow helps you go from chaos to calm by offering a user-friendly collaborative alternative to Excel enabling you to convert a spreadsheet from a static to a dynamic working platform. Providing the ability to store and control any type of content, you can make comments, amends and have discussions while automatically providing full tracking and visibility of all changes to reduce content approval times and get product to market faster.

Advanced Insight into Packaging Artwork Workflow Processes

Gain unparalleled insight with Smartflow’s business intelligence which offers immediate access to your data from your workflow processes. Smartflow offers configurable tabular reporting within the dashboard so you can identify process efficiencies, manage resources, pinpoint bottlenecks and accurately measure productivity. With top line through to detailed trend reporting, Smartflow allows you to produce day to day, management and KPI reporting.

Ensure Control and Compliance

Smartflow will automatically keep a permanent record of all approval points, status, dates and users associated with the critical path. Instant audit of all actions, comments and status with a name, time and date stamp ensures accountability and enables you to track regulatory and process compliance which is vital for validated environments and for those that require 21 CFR 11 compliance.

Online Proofing and Collaboration with all Stakeholders

Streamline review and approval processes and reduce time to market by circulating artwork, image and video content to internal and external stakeholders for online artwork approval with no third-party software or plug in requirements. Instantly display content in high resolution no matter what the file size and all of your stakeholders can view single and multiple page PDFs and highlight changes easily. Annotations are assigned by user and once reviews have been made stakeholders have the ability to approve, reject or approve with changes to significantly reduce content approval times.

Version Control Made Easy

Effectively manage artwork versions with the ability to compare different versions of artwork and highlight changes with Smartflow’s Compare Toolkit . Smartflow automatically compares files down to the pixel level to showcase any text or graphical changes between all versions. You can toggle between the differences on the compared files or only view changes displayed in bright green allowing you to ensure only the requested changes have been made.