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Apparel companies seeking greater levels of speed and agility to tackle the challenges of an Industry 4.0 world should embrace the new generation of Fashion PLM.

The latest PLM systems connect CAD, industry-standard software such as Adobe Illustrator, company IT systems (such as ERP) and external suppliers, so that actors across the supply chain can work on, save and share information on the platform, ensuring data integrity. 

New generation PLM can help automate administrative and repetitive tasks in the digital supply chain, from planning through design to production. It can also help draw on best practices in fashion-business intelligence and real-world scenarios to make more time for value-added activities.

Fashion companies can gain better visibility and control over their product development process by upgrading to a new generation of PLM. This can help them optimize their operational processes and better meet the demands of the current fashion market.

Produce more lifestyle-driven offers through 360° brand experience

Advanced PLM systems give fashion companies the power to organize and deal with an increasingly large amount of heterogeneous data from different IT systems by centralizing and filtering information, giving it meaning and relevance in the context of collection development.

This data-driven agility is key to developing the productivity and resilience that fashion companies will need to tackle the future of an industry that promises to serve up a good deal of economic and technological unknowns. 

Next-generation PLM solutions are designed to broaden the scope of traditional PLM from historical data to gather data from marketing campaigns, regional pricing data, discount information, supplier details, consumer data, such as feedback and trends gathered from consumers’ social media.

Therefore, while the garment remains at the core of fashion, capitalizing on information from past collections to inform new products is easier.  

Handle multiple product types 

More than ever before, today’s fashion market demands greater varieties of products delivered on time and on trend.

Choosing a solution that enables you to manage a variety of different product categories—or expand to new types of products—in a single information hub, where you can plan and monitor product progress, gives fashion companies a significant edge in terms of speed and efficiency.

When an information center functions in the same way as popular search engines like Google or well-known social media sites, collaboration and productivity improves greatly.  

Go beyond product development 

Fashion companies need solutions that are easy to use, connected, and encompass the entire ecosystem.

Digital solutions that incorporate PLM, PIM and DAM functionalities as well as integration with legacy systems process massive volumes of data coming from all parts of the fashion ecosystem, consolidating all information and presenting it in a structured and comprehensible manner efficiently.

They enable you to manage the process, workflow and team collaboration, from design to storefront in one easily accessible place.  

Manage data from different IT systems and organize it with ease in a structured manner 

The ability to consolidate and integrate all product information from a wide array of IT systems on one, accessible and searchable platform strengthens connections between all teams involved in the product lifecycle, but it also makes it easier to keep track of development status, product changes and timelines.

An integrated dashboard and reporting system provides clearly defined and configurable workflows and task lists to ensure product development managers allocate responsibilities equitably for better workload balancing. 

In the fast-moving fashion world, companies need configurable technology solutions that evolves with their business needs.

An integrated platform that grows with the company and scales seamlessly as the businesses scales in size and complexity to ensure that internal operational changes work with external vendors; enabling fashion businesses to diversify its product portfolio and  acquire new companies without the need to invest in a new PLM system. 

How to gain buy-in for implementing fashion PLM in your company 

The key to garnering buy-in and budget from executive decision-makers for PLM is a strong business case. 

Writing a business case will help to identify:

• where product development processes need improvement,
• how teams can work better together,
• and how technology can help the business to be more competitive.

The power of the business case is that it gives all key decision makers access to the same information, insight and ideas needed to understand the benefits, risks, and timescale of implementing a PLM solution. 

Conclusion: PLM systems drive new levels of productivity and profitability 

Fashion companies seeking to strengthen their competitiveness by delivering better quality products to market faster are adopting the new generation of Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) software to produce with greater efficiency and accuracy. 

The increasing rate at which fashion companies are required to produce new products and the growing number of stakeholders engaged in the workflow is adding greater levels of complexity to the product development process.

In response, forward-thinking industry executives and product owners are choosing process-oriented solutions to help them make better business decisions faster.