Often technological shifts are rapid and dynamic, but fashion trends change even faster.
The Fashion industry is one of the most competitive industries across the globe, where a single tweet or share on social media can create a huge stir amongst the fashion conscious people; an industry, where demand volatility largely depends on varying customer appetite and current market trends.
The fashion industry isn’t a child’s play and demands a lot in terms of material planning, order management, product designing, and control over the entire supply chain.
Fashion businesses, be it the manufacturer or a retail chain has to overcome all the roadblocks while reducing the time from concept to costume and staying profitable on tight margins.
Enterprise Resource Planning or ERP solution can become as a perfect rescue for all the tough and persistent industry-specific challenges that fashion businesses face on a day to day basis.
ERP suite can work wonders for such businesses only if they are Fashion Industry ERP software one specially designed to not only meet but also exceed the defies unique to fashion sector.
Worry not! We are here to help you select the best suitable Fashion ERP software. Go through the following blog that guides you through the steps to follow while zeroing upon an enterprise solution.
Step 1: It’s good to know your business and best to know its requirements
Understanding your specific business needs that can be fulfilled by suitable ERP modules should be your first step in the selection process.
Identify how these needs can be fulfilled? Through one complete suite or just a handful of ERP modules. For this, it is important to know your operational flow deeply along its potential loopholes.
It will help you to decide in the favour of a standalone application or a full feature module set.
Step 2: Don’t forget to match your needs with the ERP’s competencies
Since one size doesn’t fit all, and there are abundant ERP solutions available in the market. It lies in your hand to analyse and compare the capabilities of each one as per your listed needs.
There should be inbuilt capabilities in handling style and non-style items over a flexible style matrix for colour, size, fit, and design.
There must be room to accommodate full inventory characteristics for smarter logistics management right from procurement up to delivery.
Step 3: Compare the Cost vs. ROI Matrix
ERP deployment is considered as an investment in business and every investment need to be measured on the scale of returns.
This being yet another important step during the selection process, you must calculate the total cost for every solution and what business benefits you can expect from them respectively.
Make a list of all possible pros and cons next to the cost of deployment and judge wisely.
Step 4: Make sure the solution is Scalable
The scope of expansion and growth in the fashion industry is huge and hence your ERP solution must also be able to adapt to changes in demand, price variations, market dynamics, and inconsistencies in raw material availabilities.
You must opt for a solution that is a far-reaching and helps you deal with the key processes that make up global supply chains in the years to come. The applications of your fashion ERP software should be such that they offer best in class consumer-grade user experience.
It must be capable to deliver unique business capabilities that empower your teams to communicate and collaborate efficiently, so they can be more creative and innovative even if you tread the path of expansion continuously.
Step 5: Practice caution while customizing
Keeping the unique challenges of the fashion industry in mind, availing the customised version of an ERP solution is the yet another choice with the business owners.
This customization can be both- to create a new product bottom-up, built to your specifications. Or can be on the Fashion ERP you chose.
It is always advisable to go for customization in an already set-up fashion ERP as in such case the cost, time and risk involved are drastically low.
However, one must not follow the path of customization blindly instead ensure that the modifications you have opted for works to bring out the best of the processes such as designing, development, and sourcing, as well as your production, inventory management, multichannel distribution, Omni-channel sales, and finance.
Step 6: Being Responsive is the key
In today’s highly competitive business environment, flexibility and responsiveness are must-have functionalities in the Fashion ERP solution you are considering.
The new age cloud solutions offer facilities to operate key business tasks from anywhere, any time and from any device that too at a comparatively affordable price.
You can easily get a bird’s eye view of inventory updates, check order statuses, and calculate sales plus in stock numbers even while you are on a beautiful beach with your family.
When you respond to customer queries, vendor quotations, supply chain fluctuations instantly, it is reflected in business performance and revenue generation.
Hence, always select that ERP which is designed to integrate with mobile devices, tablets and laptops and offer much-desired freedom and flexibility.
Thus, if you are successful in selecting the right ERP software for your fashion business, you can better adapt your collection and styles with consumers’ changing needs and get your products to market faster than your rivals.
In case you wish to know more about ERP for Fashion, log on to https://www.batchmaster.co.in/ or leave your contact details on sales@batchmaster.com, we will reach you shortly.
Also read:
ERP Software for Bags Manufacturing Industry
ERP Software for Footwears Manufacturing Industry
