8 Lessons From AI Leaders in the Printing Industry

There’s no doubt about it: Artificial intelligence has permeated the printing and packaging industry. It touches everything from customer communications and estimating to workflow automation and beyond.

According to “AI Adoption in the Printing Industry: From Curiosity to Competitive Advantage,” an Alliance Insights report released at the 2025 PRINTING United Expo, 42% of companies surveyed think businesses that don’t use AI will not survive.

But using AI and using AI effectively are different. It takes a concerted effort to reap the benefits of AI.

Compared with those falling behind, leaders in AI adoption have implemented AI roadmaps at a higher rate (9% versus 46%). They are more likely to have assigned responsibility for AI efforts to someone on their team (51% versus 91%).

In a presentation at the 2025 Expo, Lisa Cross, principal analyst at Alliance Insights, shared eight key recommendations from 16 printing industry executives interviewed for the report.

1. Start With a Purpose

The leading piece of advice was to identify one or two high-impact pain points you’d like to address using AI and focus on that first.

“Pick one, start small, rather than trying to do everything at once,” Cross said. “Because what happens when you try to do everything at once? … Nothing! Absolutely nothing happens when you try to do too many things at once.”

Successfully implementing AI in small ways builds organizational confidence in the tool, opening the door to more opportunities for effective AI use down the road.

However, don’t get caught up in doing everything exactly right from the get-go. As the president and owner of a sign and graphics business shared with Alliance Insights: “Don’t wait for perfect — start with one task and learn as you go.”

2. Lead From the Top

Executives also recommended that leadership must model how AI should be used to their employees how AI should be used.

“It's really important to demonstrate that you're experimenting with tools,” Cross said. “It's also important to share learnings and to set expectations on how technology would be used, because in any change in an organization, if leaders are not leading, then nothing will happen.”

3. Assign Accountability

Additionally, someone at your company must be responsible for leading the charge on AI. Cross noted that this may involve incorporating AI into some employees’ job responsibilities.

“One of the recommendations was to appoint a champion or champions — people on the front line to really drive adoption, people beyond IT and management,” she said. “… These champions can help pilot tools, document use cases, coach peers, and ensure that adoption spreads throughout your organization rather than isolated departments. You really don't want people operating in silos, but if you have champions that are sharing and working across your organization to embrace AI, that's a much better strategy.”

4. Build Guardrails

While you want to encourage your team to experiment with AI and use it to boost efficiency in your organization, it’s critical to recognize that AI still requires human oversight.

To guide this oversight, Cross stressed that governance policies should establish how AI tools can be used in your company, what data can be shared, and what level of human verification is needed.

One vice president of sales for a commercial printer described the caution needed succinctly: “Never assume it’s correct. It must be human-reviewed and verified. Never use client data or personal information.”

5. Invest in People

Ensuring that your employees are comfortable using AI is a major step in the AI adoption journey. If employees are unsure about the technology or fear that it will replace them, they won’t use it.

That means familiarizing your team with AI and offering them continuing education is vital.

“One thing that we've heard companies do is really celebrate early adopters of AI, create peer-to-peer learning opportunities to really move it through your organization, and empower those employees with skills to help train others to really reduce skepticism,” Cross said.

6. Scale Deliberately

Starting small and focusing on key pain points is a great starting point for printing and packaging companies beginning their AI journeys. But greater efficiency and ROI come from expanding the implementation of these tools to higher-value areas of the business.

Cross noted that gradually introducing AI to different departments helps ensure each new deployment delivers measurable value.

As one vice president of sales at a commercial printer pointed out: “AI isn’t the decision-maker — it’s a recommendation engine. Prove it in one department before scaling.”

7. Prioritize AI as a Core Function

Companies that put time, effort, and resources into their sales process or production efficiency reap the benefits. AI requires the same attention; to be profitable, you can’t treat it as a novelty or an add-on.

That’s why Cross said it’s so important to create and follow a roadmap for your AI journey and to allocate budget to implement and fine-tune it for your organization.

Also critical is measuring performance metrics — how else would you know if your AI strategy is effective? The president of an apparel decoration company shared how the business is managing this data: “We built what we call ‘Scorecard,’ which tracks each employee’s output, and we use machine learning to forecast scheduling and capacity.”

8. Be Transparent With Clients

Finally, building and maintaining relationships with your customers is the foundation of your business, and trust is the foundation of those relationships. So, it’s important to disclose to your customers when and how AI is used in your workflows.

In an interview with Alliance Insights, a sales executive at a commercial printer said the company updated its data policy to state that any AI use will always have human oversight.

“What you tell your customers might be different than what this person did, but it's important to let them know and to share your AI use statement publicly — maybe on your website, in emails, or any way that you communicate with your customer — because that builds trust and efficiency,” Cross said.

To learn more about how AI is being used in the industry and where print service providers are facing challenges and reaping benefits, download the “AI Adoption in the Printing Industry: From Curiosity to Competitive Advantage” report here.

And for more insights on AI, be sure to visit the PRINTING AI Pavilion at the 2026 PRINTING United Expo, taking place in Las Vegas Sept. 23-25.