The fashion and apparel industry is known for its fast-paced nature, constant trend changes, and ever-evolving consumer demands. Fashion brands need to remain agile, innovative, and efficient to stay ahead of competitors while managing complexities in design, production, supply chain, and retail. To meet these challenges head-on, many fashion brands are turning to specialized Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) systems, designed to optimize operations and enhance collaboration.

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.

This complete product lifecycle solution helps reduce the time from inspiration to the launch of new styles and SKUs for the fashion industry vertically.

Philadelphia, PA – February 26, 2024 -- Independent Computer Consulting Group, Inc. (“ICCG”) is pleased to announce the addition of Infor‘s best-of-breed solution - Fashion Product Lifecycle Management (PLM), to its solution portfolio for its Fashion, Home Décor, Footwear, and Luxury products customers. This, along with Cloud suite Fashion (Infor M3) and Infor Supply Chain Management suite, completes the solution suite for the Fashion Industry vertical. We extend Fashion to Home Décor, Furnishing, Footwear, and Luxury products.

Infor PLM for Fashion was created using the latest Infor technologies to help fashion brands, manufacturers, and private brand retailers develop styles more quickly and efficiently and improve speed to market. This is one of the key competitive differentiators for Fashion designers, manufacturers, and distributors.

ICCG Inc. is an Infor enterprise software-focused consulting firm with a global presence and a track record of over 2000 business transformation projects, with execution across not only Infor M3 ERP systems but also Supply Chain Planning Systems, Warehouse Management solutions, and now PLM solutions deployments.

As industry attitudes and consumer behaviors change, so does the challenge of sustaining a business in the fashion industry. The global health crisis has accelerated the need for fashion and retail brand owners to reconsider their current business models to satisfy their digitally native consumers while maintaining omni-channel supply and ensuring sustainable production.

Whether large or small, fashion brands can turn these challenges into opportunities by transforming their business models. How does your organization meet the expectations and desires of today’s digital consumers? Are you still using old technology that might have served you well in the past but is now beyond its shelf life? If you already have an ERP system in place, there’s a good chance it’s no longer able to keep up with your business needs and growth aspirations.

In today’s highly technical, data-driven fashion environment, the limited functionality of spreadsheets and other outdated, manual-entry tools often result in significant time lags, data inaccuracies, linear sequential processes, and an inability to integrate with shared data libraries. When the greatest asset a fashion manufacturers can have is getting new ideas to consumers quickly, manufacturers can’t afford to let technology slow them down.

That’s why fashion companies need Infor CloudSuite™ PLM for Fashion—a modern, product lifecycle
management (PLM) solution that can handle the fast-paced demands of a 21st-century fashion business. It can help brands develop new styles with increased speed, greater flexibility, and more consistent quality.

Based in the cloud, CloudSuite PLM for Fashion lets you work from anywhere, on virtually any device.Innovate faster. Infor CloudSuite PLM for Fashion is a powerful PLM and collaboration platform that can help fashion manufacturers and their value chain partners innovate faster, make processes more efficient, and easily share information. As a result, fashion manufacturers will have the tools they need to create exciting fashions and deliver them to consumers faster.

As the world emerges from a Covid-19-inspired hibernation, organizations are evaluating how to ensure the return to work is handled safely and efficiently. For many organizations, this return will be more symbolic than physical as the benefits of allowing employees to work remotely have become too obvious to ignore. For example, remember then Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey's communication to employees, suggesting they could continue to work remotely forever?

"If our employees are in a role and situation that enables them to work from home and they want to continue to do so forever, we will make that happen. If not, our offices will be their warm and welcoming selves, with some additional precautions, when we feel it’s safe to return."

This trend is unquestionably gaining momentum as other companies such as Google, Facebook, Microsoft and many others have formally communicated their intent to extend their remote work policies (some through the end of the calendar year).

Design your value chain for omni-channel

Today, customers expect to shop, compare, purchase, and consume on their own terms—on their own schedule, through a variety of channels, and on a variety of devices. For fashion companies, that means operating in a customer-driven economy. Not only should your marketing campaigns drive customers to the omni-channel outlets that you monitor, but your value chain should be ready to support these efforts. The omni-channel experience must be seamless and consistent, inspiring your customers to make purchases whether they’re in a physical store or online.

For your omni-channel management efforts and value chain to be in sync, you must move toward new business models that are far more collaborative, consumer driven, responsive, and quick. But how do you design a value chain so you can get closer to your customers and quickly deliver on their needs? And how do you get your value chain partners aligned to get the right products to where consumers want them—as quickly and efficiently as possible? This eBook will answer these questions and more.

The existence of Conflicting objectives means we should look at aligning the processes and systems to enable us the make the appropriate decision and tradeoffs. But Siloed thinking and the Legacy systems deficit are making this more difficult to achieve.

There is no question that the solution is to first and foremost focus on people and process as we did in the second blog, Redefining the Processes, but technology can make a real difference to enable these processes and make the people able to focus on the important issues rather than the mundane task of data gathering and analysis.

The last 30 years have seen a huge expansion of global trade. Many of the goods we consume today are made in a different continents. The chase for the cheapest production location has resulted in complex, long lead time supply chains which have significantly increased the risk of disruptions, reduced supply chain efficiencies and increased our environment impact.