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.

Digitizing core processes in combination with trading partner connectivity, helps supply chain leaders increase responsiveness and adaptability. As more organizations look to remove manual tasks from their operations, the ability to update suppliers and trading partners in real-time allows supply chain processes to become more efficient. Here are three scenarios where moving to a network platform have helped companies generate additional value across their supply chain.

• A footwear provider experiencing rapid growth realized spreadsheets and manual processes were no longer sufficient to support increase demand and future progression. The brand digitally transformed sourcing, procurement, accounts payable, finance, and supplier management processes to support scale. The ability to digitally collaborate on orders, invoices, settlements, and ASN creation was foundational to the transformation. Witnessing 4X growth, the company today has 99.8% invoice accuracy and spends approximately 30 minutes per day processing invoices.

• A major global sports apparel brand sought to solidify the health of its supply base by ensuring access to capital. Utilizing a multi-enterprise network allowed the company to connect all parties and digitized document flow, enabling automated financing and settlement. A diverse portfolio of finance providers was plugged in to create a significant pool of credit and programs to meet varying needs. In doing so, the brand was able to enhance the financial health of its suppliers while deploying its own capital preservation program.

• An outdoor gear manufacturer having automated its PO, invoice, and settlement processes to generate efficiency was seeking further avenues to improve margins. It leveraged existing transaction data to auto-populate ASNs and packing and shipping instructions, enabling direct shipments from the factory. As a result, plans for new distribution center were deemed no longer necessary due to increased efficiency.

Know you want to transform but don't know where to start? Want to gain $9-12 for every dollar you spend? Read on to find out why starting with your people is the best first step to prioritizing digital transformation projects.

Digital transformation is at the top of the to-do lists of most companies, but one topic that is often missing from a discussion on digital transformation is which areas to prioritize. Most businesses can’t afford to completely overhaul a core function of the enterprise top to bottom, along with the technology that supports it, at any one time. Instead, they’ll target specific areas for transformation. That approach minimizes disruption to the business, keeps costs manageable, and helps the business apply lessons learned to future transformation projects. The question, though, is which areas to target first?

Supply chain disruptions caused by black swan events are by nature unforeseeable events that can be utterly catastrophic. Due to their destructive potential, these unfortunate events justifiably draw attention to how critical supply chains are to sustaining business success and essential daily functions. Unfortunately, they also draw attention to how vulnerable supply chains tend to be when faced with sudden adversity.

Studying the kinds of companies that can weather such catastrophes provides many key lessons about how enterprises can implement resiliency solutions and strategies to respond to, and mitigate, the deleterious effects of a black swan event.

There are four key steps enterprises can adopt to ensure that they are able to respond and react with the flexibility needed to minimize the impacts of black swan events and the “ripple” of disruption occurring at numerous levels of magnitude.

The modern fashion consumer, often referred to as the conscious consumer, expects more than a transactional relationship with the brands they purchase garments from. They want an authentic, personalized, and seamless shopping journey that reflects the specific context of how and why they choose a brand. These desired brand attributes require control beyond brick and mortar supply and present challenges to the fashion brand’s entire supply chain. A label is no longer reason enough to secure a sale. Customers want to know more about the companies from which they are buying, and have developed more sophisticated expectations around the environmental impact, product sustainability, and circularity that constitutes a modern brand experience.

When extreme levels of disruption occur, supply chains immediately launch a survival strategy that tends be focused solely on the enterprise, leaving upstream and downstream trading partners to fend for themselves. Whether scrambling to enable remote work opportunities, implement flexible or staggered labor scheduling, or launch multiple capital preservation strategies, organizations have begun employing a variety of strategies to protect their supply chains and weather the storm.

To ensure the health of the overall supply chain network, the urgency to digitize processes and documents that allow both data and capital to be unlocked has become more prevalent than ever—particularly when a complex number of parties, systems, and document across geographical regions and time zones are involved.

For years, digitization has been considered an optional strategy by many companies, thus resulting in static and disconnected buyer-supplier collaboration points across supply chains. For many organizations, processes continue to be highly manual across fragmented systems, resulting in inefficient, error prone workflows.

Reliance upon Excel®, email, and phone calls remains common across a staggeringly significant amount of business, thereby resulting in delays, non-compliance, and friction between buyer and seller. Time and resources lost synchronizing simple concepts like purchase order confirmations, negotiation, documentary compliance, and invoice approvals cripples flexibility and agility, all while locking up millions, if not billions in working capital.

Anywhere paper or manual processes exist a lack of visibility follows, leaving missed opportunities to harness real-time supply chain data that optimizes decisions and mitigate risks.

When it comes to ensuring supply chain health, there are three key approaches your organization can do to improve processes and build resiliency into your network. Not only will this help you minimize uncertainty during times of disruption, it will also help streamline improvements during times of prosperity.

Supply chain essential #1: Digital documents, data, and settlements

Companies must focus on network connectivity and process automation to drive agility and responsiveness while continually investing in predictive and proactive sense and respond capabilities.

Economic sustainability includes multiple key components starting with digital connectivity and collaboration as the digitization of documents and workflows enables speed and agility. Multi-enterprise collaboration enables strategic programs such as providing suppliers access to capital through a multi-bank network. This helps the entire supply chain endure dynamic liquidity shortages that often stem from a crisis and a period of economic recovery.

The competitive landscape of the wholesale distribution industry is fiercer than ever before. With brand-new, internet-based distributors of all sizes seemingly popping up as quickly as mergers and acquisitions are building new distribution powerhouses, the competition just keeps getting more intense. Adding to the mix are an increasing number of manufacturing companies that are selling direct to retailers and offering online shopping options for consumers, bypassing distribution companies entirely. And let’s not forget the impact big box stores and e-tailers can have on the distribution channel as they leverage their purchasing power, large retail networks, and extensive B2C experience.

Of course, no discussion about distribution competition is complete without addressing the elephant in the room, Amazon® Business. With the ability to sell millions of SKUs with flexible shipping options at low price points, Amazon is setting a high bar for customer expectations. Amazon is very good at responding to how buyers buy today by offering a powerful customer experience that uses modern technologies, such as artificial intelligence (A.I.) and data science.

The hospitality and gaming industries require specific functionality when it comes to sales and catering, and event management. The same goes for family entertainment centers like bowling centers, laser-tag spaces, and others.

What are those factors? What should organizations in these sectors look for in software solutions to manage these important aspects of their business. The cloud has emerged as a proven alternative to the legacy systems used by the hotel industry.  One by one and group by group, independent hotels and chains alike, are seeking out a cloud-based platform to provide integrated solutions for their hospitality management needs. 

Beyond cloud technology, let’s look at some other event sales and catering software characteristics that contribute to the success of hotel and casinos as legacy systems are beginning to be phased out.