The first place most organizations will go for answers to the remote work dilemma is into the arms of technology vendors. They will make the assumption that a new tool, or the enhancement of a current one will be the key to maintaining a productive workforce despite the continued existence of physical distance. After all, Zoom (arguably the most infamous beneficiary of the pandemic) went from 10 million daily users in December 2019 to more than 300 million in April 2020. In reality, there are sequential steps to take well before any new technology is introduced to the equation.

The culture question

The first step is more introspective, as organizations would benefit from a candid evaluation of their culture that may or may not be a strong foundation for a remote work environment. A dispersed workforce presents unique challenges that will quickly test the foundation of trust between employee and employer. Ryan Malone, founder of digital marketing agency SmartBugMedia finds this counterintuitive. "You've invested all of this time in vetting them," says Malone. "Why would you now say I don't trust you, because I'm not staring at you?” Would your organization be able to quickly adapt to this new degree of independence and autonomy, or would there be a temptation to revert to surveillance tactics to validate effort?

An established digital ecosystem lets brands reduce design-plan-manufacture cycles, improve supply chain planning accuracy, enable end-to-end inventory visibility, and help manage financial orchestration and liquidity. This helps ensure that the right products get to the right place, at the right time—on budget, and aligned with sustainability efforts that appeal to customers socially and environmentally. Additionally, a connected supply chain can improve visibility of key production metrics such as water usage and chemical content, all of which can be shared with consumers.

Collaborative networks connect complex systems of enterprises, applications, service providers, data sources, and devices involved in a fashion brand’s value chain and host them on a cloud-based platform for optimal performance and accessibility. Cloud-based systems facilitate the communication, performance, scale, security, and computing power needed to leverage technology solutions across the entire design to the manufacturing cycle.

Consumers want new fashion product, more variety, and the ability to make purchases whenever and wherever they choose.This is driving businesses to invest in digital transformation and fast-fashion. However companies running on legacy systems are  struggling to keep up  with the pace of change, while young and rapidly growing must take their first decisions about investing in enterprise software.

Infor CloudSuite Fashion delivers cloud on demand computing as a service with rich industry-specific functionality to cover your unique business needs. It's build specifically for apparel, footwear, home textile and fashion accessories companies and supports all your core processes whether you  manufacture, are a brand owner, or a private brand retailer. Infor CloudSuite Fashion can help you shorten time to consumer, seamlessly manage global operations, make your operations leaner, and profitably grow your business. 

With Infor CloudSuite Fashion your data is held in a secure and resilient environment, so that you can focus on running our business. You can count on our industry specific software to provide you with the same proven functionality, that is already helping hundreds of fashion customers worldwide, both on premise and on cloud.

Creating supply chain resiliency through more precise demand prediction.

An accurate demand prediction is one of the most critical elements of a resilient supply chain. When catastrophic events occur that can cause a massive shift in consumer behavior, retailers of all shapes and sizes are suddenly scrambling to adjust their forecasts. With the pandemic potentially forcing new or extended “shelter in place” orders, people will continue turning to new methods of receiving groceries, clothing, and other consumer products.

As we see different parts of the country and globe beginning to reopen, it’s possible many of these shopping behaviors may stick as people opt for less dining out due to new grocery shopping trends: pantry loading, working remotely, willingness to try private label, and a shift to new fulfillment channels.

As inventory levels drastically fluctuate, many shoppers have settled for what they (or their personalized shopper) can find, ultimately throwing brand loyalty out the window for cheaper brands, private labels, or store brands. Consumers have opted for new buying channels as well, ordering online and having groceries delivered. If the ease of these channels stick, it’s possible to see a long-term shift.

Food and beverage companies have long struggled with the unique requirements of shelf life management, complexities of batch scheduling, traceability, and many other factors. In addition, uncertainties around tariffs, sustainability initiatives, and growing regulations are some of a multitude of dynamics that will surely add even more complexity to the mix. Many of these issues and trends can have profound impact on your entire supply chain—from procurement to manufacturing to delivery.

Infor's Mike Edgett and Christine Barnhardt and I had the opportunity to discuss a number of challenges as it relates to supply chain complexities in the food and beverage industry. In the webinar, we segmented the challenges into three buckets; gain global visibility, predict and respond to volatility, and embrace the best technology.

We all tend to limit our focus to the variables within our control, however, it’s time to rethink all supply chain processes because they are not as efficient as they need to be. We did a survey of the companies that were on the Infor Nexus network, about two years ago, and what we found is that about 46% of them said that prior to implementing Infor Nexus it took them as long as three days to identify where a product were, and when it was going to be available. Very clearly the data is not available to help us make good decisions. On top of that, there are gaps for how manufacturers connect with customers, suppliers and carriers outside of the enterprise, whether it be multiple point-to-point EDI connections, portals, spreadsheets, emails—the list is almost endless—and very difficult to maintain.

The COVID-19 pandemic continues to ravage the health of individuals, communities, and economic sectors—and that includes retail establishments. Around the globe, in every country,normal life has changed dramatically, and we see the results in store closures (both temporary and permanent), employee layoffs, and people focused on and immediate essential needs. So we see apparel, shoes and non-essentials dropped down the list of purchasing priorities.

We already know that most retailers were under intense margin and revenue pressure before this crisis hit. Now one of the new financial burdens resulting from the pandemic is an abundance of inventory trapped throughout the supply chain. But, amidst this, there is still good news. If you are a retail business, there are a variety of options for you to work through these situational excesses. The optimal combination will depend on each retailer’s unique situation.

As the global economy slowly reopens, this timely blog from our partner, Info shares how retailers actually have 5 major opportunities for resolving their overstock issues.

Mitchell Chi, General Manager - Americas Enterprise Software, attended the NRF 2020 Vision show at Javits Center in NYC. “RETAIL IS FAR FROM DEAD," said Mitch. "Only the complacent retailers should be worried. The atmosphere here is “let’s INVEST to grow our business in 2020”. Lots of smiles, serious questions and tremendous interest from senior execs, who are here in droves”. 

In today’s highly competitive and consumer-driven marketplace, fashion companies are under enormous pressure to create exciting new products at a moment’s notice. By providing a central repository for storing and accessing design and development information, CloudSuite PLM for Fashion can help businesses meet this need for speed, while also making sure new styles and collections are delivered with consistent quality—at the right time and right price.

Accelerate innovation with CloudSuite PLM for Fashion

Whether a company has 20 users or more than 2,000, Infor CloudSuite PLM for Fashion is designed to accelerate development cycles to get ideas to market faster. With its intuitive, personalized user interface, CloudSuite PLM for Fashion is an end-to-end solution that connects every aspect of a product’s lifecycle, from the first sketch to the store.

The biggest mall owner in the U.S., Simon Property Group, is teaming with online shopping site Rue La La’s parent company to launch a new kind of website for people looking for deals.

The real estate company announced Wednesday it’s partnering with Rue Gilt Groupe, which is backed by Michael Rubin, CEO of Fanatics’ parent company Kynetic, to create a new e-commerce business for discount shopping.

Simon has been testing the website “ShopPremiumOutlets.com” since March, building on its premium outlet centers business. The mall owner operates dozens of premium outlet centers nationwide and a handful overseas. It’s been working with certain retailers at those centers — which include Woodbury Common Premium Outlets in New York — to test selling merchandise together on this site. It says it has signed on more than 2,000 designers, and has about 300,000 products.

In this episode we talk with Morin Sarenio of CGTrader, a company of 2-million designers that’s providing retailers with immersive augmented reality that lets customers try products online before they buy them. That means better customer experience, fewer returns, and major savings on reverse logistics.