How Deploy Solved Asset Management at Scale with Prolab® Raised Profile Labels

Deploy's asset management requirements are significant. Equipment needs calibrating, inspecting, and tracking. Staff need to know what they have, where it is, and whether it is due for service. At scale, that is a problem that demands a proper system, not a workaround.

As Deploy put it: "We've got hundreds and hundreds of staff and we've got thousands of pieces of equipment, and on that sort of scale, spreadsheets just don't cut it."

The first step towards a solution was asset tagging. The concept was sound: label every piece of equipment with a unique identifier so it could be logged, tracked, and managed digitally. But the execution fell short. The adhesive stickers Deploy had been using kept failing. Labels peeled off equipment, leaving gaps in the tracking system and creating extra work for teams who had to relabel items repeatedly.

For a company operating across multiple sectors and sites, unreliable labels are more than an inconvenience. They undermine the entire purpose of an asset management system. If you cannot trust that the label on a piece of equipment will still be there next month, the data behind it becomes unreliable too.

Deploy turned to Silver Fox® and the Fox-in-a-Box® thermal printing system. Rather than ordering pre-printed stickers from an external supplier and hoping they would stick, Deploy could now produce their own asset labels in-house, on demand, using a single printer, a single software package, and a single ribbon.

The labels themselves made the critical difference. Prolab® Raised Profile Labels are built on a foam-carrier polyester construction with a strong acrylic adhesive designed for long-term bonding. Unlike the thin adhesive stickers that had been failing, these raised profile labels grip the surface of equipment and stay put.

As Deploy described: "We were producing these stickers in the hundreds. They were going on all of our equipment and they were superb. They stuck on - you're thinking out before they come off the equipment."

Using the Professional level of Labacus Innovator® software, Deploy can also incorporate barcodes, QR codes, and GS1-compliant data matrix codes into their asset labels. This capability connects physical labels to digital asset management systems, turning each tagged item into a scannable data point.

What made the solution work for Deploy was not just the labels or the printer in isolation. It was the integration between their asset management software and the Fox-in-a-Box® hardware. Deploy described it as "a real good collaboration between two different pieces of software and hardware that allowed us to solve that problem in an instant, really."

This is a pattern Silver Fox® sees across industries. Labelling is rarely a standalone activity. It sits at the intersection of physical assets and digital systems, and the value comes from making that connection seamless. The Fox-in-a-Box® system is designed to integrate with existing workflows rather than replace them. Asset IDs can be exported from management software or Excel spreadsheets directly into Labacus Innovator®, which generates the label designs and sends them to the printer.

For Deploy, this meant that the process of tagging a new piece of equipment went from a manual, error-prone task to a streamlined workflow. Create the asset record, generate the label, print it, apply it. No transcription errors, no waiting for external suppliers, no wondering whether the label will still be attached next week.

The results speak for themselves. Deploy's asset labels stayed on. Their tracking system became reliable. And the Fox-in-a-Box® became a tool the team kept coming back to.

"We've still got the Fox-in-a-Box. I think we just put another order in for some more stickers," Deploy confirmed, highlighting both the durability of the hardware and the ongoing demand for labels as their asset register continues to grow.

Deploy also noted something significant about the approach: Silver Fox® was the first company to make this kind of software and hardware integration work for asset labelling. "We're the only company to do it, and like all good innovation, several years later we've seen a few of our competitors just starting to realise that it's doable themselves."

That head start matters. By the time others began catching up, Deploy had already solved their asset management challenge and moved on to applying Silver Fox® solutions to other problems, including QR code-based site patrols and railway asset identification.

Deploy's experience illustrates one of the Fox-in-a-Box® system's core strengths: versatility. The same printer that produces Prolab® Raised Profile asset labels can also print cable labels, heatshrink markers, wrap-around labels, patch panel labels, and more. There is no need for multiple devices or separate software packages for each label type.

For organisations managing large equipment inventories, this matters. Asset tagging is often just one part of a broader identification challenge. Cables need labelling. Control panels need marking. Safety signage needs updating. Having a single system that handles all of these tasks reduces complexity, training time, and cost.

Silver Fox® also offers Prolab® Low Profile Asset Labels for applications where a slimmer label is preferred, such as laptops, monitors, or equipment with limited surface area. Both raised and low profile labels are printed using the same Fox-in-a-Box® system and Labacus Innovator® software, giving organisations the flexibility to choose the right label for each application without changing their workflow.