In the ever-evolving fashion industry landscape, it's imperative to reassess traditional practices and embrace innovative approaches to foster sustainability. Rather than perpetually chasing the trend treadmill and inundating the market with new products, fashion companies must pivot towards establishing a dynamic ecosystem of services that actively engage consumers in sustainable practices.

"Evaluating Your Cloud Migration Options: Which Path is Right for Your Business?" discusses the benefits of migrating to the cloud and provides guidance on strategic considerations for cloud migration.

The paper highlights the advantages of cloud-based enterprise software, emphasizing improved agility, reduced total cost of ownership (TCO), enhanced performance and scalability, faster innovation, simplified security and compliance, and increased technology adoption.

It outlines three strategic areas for cloud migration:

1. Core Business Operations: Moving critical business functions like financial, operations, and supply chain management to the cloud.
2. Key Business Processes: Focusing on specific business processes to balance risk and return on investment.
3. Enterprise Analytics: Leveraging cloud data platforms to aggregate data and foster a data-driven culture.

The 2024 fashion forecast presents a cautiously optimistic outlook. Still, there is uncertainty among industry leaders due to various challenges affecting profitability and sustainability, such as economic slowdown, inflation, weak consumer confidence, and unsold inventory. To thrive in this environment, fashion brands must embrace technology, specifically automation and data-driven insights, to make robust decisions, improve operational efficiency and resilience, and navigate disruptions with agility. The future of fashion lies in the intersection of market needs and innovation. As 2024 progresses, fashion companies should focus on significant tech trends to enhance their competitive edge.

Just as companies must transform to meet today’s challenges, the software vendors they rely on must also mutate their products to become a better fit for the next generation of organizations. And that’s happening with ERP. From my perspective, here are the seven ways ERP is evolving, along with my tips for selecting an ERP vendor.

The role of the CFO has changed dramatically over recent times and will continue to do so. The modern CFO is now emerging as a key enabler in creating a more ‘dynamic’ finance function that can react to ever changing demands from both internal stakeholders and external customer, suppliers and partners. In addition to the traditional responsibility of ‘managing the finances’ of the organisation, the CFO is now increasingly engaged with activities such as strategy formulation and business transformation projects. 

Business transformation projects are increasingly being undertaken to facilitate growth, reduce costs and increase competitiveness in a harsh global marketplace where only the organisations who continually evolve and innovate prosper. The finance function is not immune to this transformation process and can play a key role in its development and adoption.

Chief Financial Officers need to play a leading role to ensure data security within an organisation. Potential threats are proliferating and the financial impact of a breach of data security can be substantial. Consider how your turnover and profitability would be impacted due to a data security breach which could potentially hold your organisation to ransom or prevent users from performing their day to day activities.

At a recent Footwear Workshop organized by the American Apparel & Footwear Association (AAFA), industry leaders and experts discussed key themes and supply chain challenges in the footwear market. At this event, industry leaders highlighted the need for brands to address multiple challenges like supply chain visibility, traceability, compliance, and sustainability. Here are some other key themes: