Are You Getting the Most from Your Product Lifecycle Data?

There is always a degree of chance and good fortune at play in the fashion and consumer goods game. Some seasons you set the trends. Others you catch up to the trends. Then there are those times you miss opportunities for a variety of reasons. It’s all in the art and science of a fast-moving industry, and it’s not for the faint of heart!

There are ways technology, particularly product lifecycle management (PLM), can help your business be among the ones setting or riding the trends and delivering the right product at the right time in the right place at the right price. To do so, you need the right data.

Smarter Planning with Aggregated Information

What organization doesn’t want to ease the process of building out, rolling up and collaborating on plans across the organization?

In its 2021 outlook, the Business of Fashion (BoF) wrote about the need to “systematically assess the impact of strategic initiatives launched since the start of the pandemic and re-evaluate their initial assumptions about factors like sales and volume based on real-time results.” BoF said “fashion leaders will have to reimagine budgeting from a zero-base approach, with pre-defined funds allocated to different possible scenarios.”

More than a year later, this guidance still holds true. Management teams need an integrated planning solution to leverage both historical and current point-of-sale (POS) data to make informed decisions. Teams across departments want easy access to financial planning assumptions, so that they can start planning for how to achieve their targets and goals. PLM technology like BlueCherry^® Next™ PLM is a connector between financial, merchandising, design, product development and production plans.

Data-Supported Design and Development

Find that powerful balance between artistic inspiration and intuition and data-driven insights. With integrated PLM and enterprise resource planning (ERP) technology, it’s possible to give designers and product developers easy access to sell-through trends, production costs and other practical, valuable data. Then they don’t have to wade through spreadsheets or repeatedly contact suppliers or colleagues in other departments for the latest information.

“If trends are driven by data, then what happens to creativity? Fashion buyer Steve Brown … is of the belief that efficient production cycles will let designers to focus on what they love,” wrote Anoushka Makhija in JD Institute of Fashion Technology’s blog “Data Driven Design.” “Data is a time saver and helps to validate intuition. … As data collection efforts grow, more sophisticated artificial intelligence will reshape brands’ approach to product design and development, with a focus on predicting what customers will want to wear next. Improved predictions help the company stock merchandise more efficiently across thousands of stores.”

Supply Chain Management with Stronger Tracking and Analytics

Now your best-laid plans and your strongest styles are approved, and you are heading into production. Don’t let off the gas and lower your expectations for clear information to make business decisions. “Leading retailers mitigate supply chain risks by having alternate sources of supply, raw materials and inventory in place to address disruptions,” said Clay Parnell, president and managing partner, The Parker Avery Group, in his blog post “Retail Reality: Navigating Through the Madness.”

To work on both your production action and contingency plans, it’s essential to aggregate and analyze supplier and vendor data. For example, what greige goods do you have in stock and when do your preferred dye houses and printers have capacity to convert these materials? What other materials do you have an option to buy? How will your costs per pound of dyed material or per yard of finished fabric vary if you postpone your purchase commitment date? How much lead time do your cut-and-sew contractors need to finish your order after they receive the fabric? What if a contractor has to close because of a lockdown? How do you know how much of the order is ready to ship? On a regular basis, fashion businesses are confronted with these questions or equally challenging ones. Integrated ERP, including PLM with raw materials planning capabilities and shop-floor control (SFC) technology, can help supply the answers.

“What-if scenarios require Decision Support Systems (DSS) tools that are sophisticated enough to model the key constraints of your production and sourcing environment and help pinpoint the bottlenecks, so that appropriate hedging strategies can be developed — such as should we invest in adding another line to our plan or look for a subcontractor that could give us that capacity,” said Bill McBeath, chief research officer, ChainLink Research, in his article, “Thriving in the Age of Uncertainty — Part Two.”

Are you getting the most from your product lifecycle data? Visit our BlueCherry Next PLM page and see how a highly configurable, no-code product lifecycle management solution  provides a comprehensive set of tools to manage your entire product lifecycle.