Asda brand packaging is printed globally across a variety of suppliers, print processes, and substrates. With a small team of print specialists, it was impossible and impractical for Asda to attend even a small percentage of press passes across all suppliers to validate print quality.
Seven years ago, Asda adopted the X-Rite Pantone ColorCert Suite, a digital color program to help them streamline approvals and deliver brand presence and quality assurance on the shelf across their primary and secondary packaging printers.
Today, a majority of Asda's approved printers have installed pressroom tools and report data directly into the ColorCert Scorecard Server. Asda sets tolerances for process colors, brand colors, overprints and gray balance to ensure process control, and printers can evaluate and monitor their own print quality with objective and consistent metrics.
Asda Upgrades to New ColorCert ScoreCard Server
X-Rite Pantone recently released ColorCert ScoreCard Server 2.0. When used as part of a brand quality control program, this new release offers print suppliers the ability to configure dashboards and create automated, tailored quality reports.
For the last few months, the team at Asda have been working in very close cooperation with the product development team from X-Rite Pantone to start using the redesigned ColorCert ScoreCard Server. We recently sat down with Jason Gilmartin, Senior Print Manager at Asda, to discuss the project.
X-Rite Pantone: What opportunities do you see with the new release of ColorCert Scorecard Server?
Asda: We’ve been using ColorCert for over seven years with great success. In fact, ColorCert has helped us raise the bar on packaging quality across the board. Performance scores increased by an amazing 200 percent from implementation with some of our printers (download the case study).
With a tried and proven color management model in our Food and Non-Edible categories, we wanted to help test and implement the new release of ScoreCard Server. We liked the thought of tailoring color data per sector, substrate, and supplier in even further detail to meet exactly our reporting and analyzing requirements, without missing any details.
X-Rite Pantone: Can you explain your collaboration with X-Rite Pantone during this transition to the new release of ScoreCard Server?
Asda: Typically, when large organization's embark on a project like this, we lose sight of the big picture, dealing with multiple stakeholders, spending a lot of time going back and forth on small detail, and losing track of what we're trying to achieve. I'm happy to say that this has not been the case on trialing and beta testing the newest version of ScoreCard Server - the whole project has been extremely refreshing.
The X-Rite Pantone team have been super engaged. There were a number of kick-off meetings up front to understand how the Asda team have been using Scorecard Server - what works, what doesn't work, what could be improved, what is missing, etc. As the project progressed, X-Rite Pantone remained engaged with our stakeholders, ensuring we understood what the new ways of working mean, how it will impact users, and what will be different to previous methods.
X-Rite Pantone also demonstrated all the new functions and features available in this new release, aligned to our initial requests and feedback. This approach meant we entered beta testing in a strong place, with our user group being able to see some of the key changes immediately.
X-Rite Pantone: How did you keep track of such a large project with multiple stakeholders?
Asda: Once we started beta testing the new version of Scorecard Server, the X-Rite Pantone team made use of our Project Log tracker which kept a record of all issues and queries flagged and provided one central place to track the progress of these. This has been a huge success, allowing all stakeholders to see the project status, and demonstrates all the work that has gone into iterative changes and fixes.
X-Rite& Pantone: What's the status of Asda's transition to the new version of ColorCert Scorecard Server?
Asda: For the last few months, the team at Asda have been solely using the newest version. We are now at a point where we are almost ready to migrate fully, which is expected to take place this month. Again, this type of change can be quite worrying, but given the due diligence that has gone into this, I can honestly say I have no concern about making this move and look forward to embracing the upgrade to ScoreCard Server.
A Mutual Partnership to Improve the Packaging Supply Chain
According to Jason Campbell, ColorCert Product Manager at X-Rite Pantone, “Working in very close co-operation with Asda has helped us to enhance this new release of Scorecard Server to become the most advanced and integrated, cloud-based platform to give brands, pre-media and print production managers real-time visibility into color performance across presses and production facilities. Advanced tools allow reports and analytics to drill down into specific jobs, compare color quality between print and packaging component runs, and uncover trends over time.
As the project progresses, both Asda and X-Rite Pantone remain engaged, ensuring the new version will positively impact both companies as well as the entire packaging supply chain.
Learn More
To learn more about the cost of a brand color in packaging, download our free whitepaper. To learn about the issues associated with traditional print programs and how to add digital color, read our How Digital Color Technology Connects Packaging Tasksblog.
Our Color Experts are also available to talk about your specific brand color needs. Get in touch.
