Product Lifecycle
Management
Agility and swift reaction to changing market needs are the pivotal factors that impact a competitive advantage for retail and e-commerce organizations. Emerging fashion trends, introduction of new materials, focus on sustainability combined with shortened product and collection lifecycle impacts the demand for specific assortment groups. With a long time-to-market, dispersed design and buying processes, coupled with costly supplier collaboration, and prolonged lead-times, companies struggle to effectively manage and optimize the execution of their product full lifecycle. This, combined with an exponentially growing assortment mix and volume of product data, implies that mistakes made 9-months ahead of introducing a collection are really hard to be spotted and fixed at later stages. This could be the key reason why companies should invest in a “single source of truth” for all of the collection data, forming a hub for collaboration and idea-sharing both internally and externally.
Key Challenges
- Lack of digital collection visualization in one place
- Several methods and systems to manage various stages of product design and development, which is time consuming and lasts too long
- E-mail communication with Suppliers without structured history, consistent standards and automation
- Extensive time-to-market process
- Dispersed buying process that leads to similar product offerings purchased within one collection
Gains:
2 - 5%
up to 20%
1 - 3%
Benefits:
- Faster time-to-market:
- Digital transformation that supports optimization of underlying supply chain processes
- Reduced number of physical samples
- Faster access to prototypes/concepts to stay ahead of the design curve
- At-the-glance view on the entire assortment, blocks of assortment as well as specific departments and groups of products
- Transformation of a market launch from inspiration to assortment development and purchase
- Streamline processes:
- Collaboration with Suppliers (RFI, RFP, digital sample, order and delivery)
- Digital Milestone Meetings
- Ordering fulfilment and cash flow monitoring
- Track and control the delivery and logistics costs
- Omnichannel support (Retail, E-commerce, Franchise, Wholesale marketplace)
