What to consider when weighing the cost
Growing and competing in today’s global economy requires more than just great products. Even the best management teams and the most dedicated employees must contend with increased competition, increased price of goods and ever increasing regulatory constraints. These challenges eat up margin, leave little room for error and typically increase the stress and workload across the entire organization.
So while PLM may be an additional cost, it may be one that is absolutely worth it.
So can you afford it?
Beyond the obvious answer (“yes”), are the details you should understand regarding the costs and what those dollars actually add up to over time.
Over the past 5 years, new PLM providers have entered the market and that’s good news for everyone. This competition has been great for brands because in order to stay competitive, older, traditional PLM providers, once suited for the largest global companies, have stepped up their game by offering lower cost solutions, as well as improving on their design. It’s also introduced new players, and brought investment money to the table by Silicon Valley VCs and angel investors who see a new emerging growth category within software.
What To Consider
Weighing the value of cost vs. benefit depends on many things, but primarily if your organization is struggling in the following areas, then a PLM solution will be your best option.
Planning -Planning and forecasting are not producing the results you want, or you’ve had to dedicate additional employees for the sheer task of analyzing and sifting through data.
Merchandising-A disconnect happening between your target plans and your financial plans or you are having difficulty evaluating plans by department or collection.
Design-Your designers are spending too much time developing storyboards or rifling through various iterations.
Production-Delays, miscommunication and mistakes at the factory level.
Quality-Safety standards are coming back to haunt you, and brand standards are not being upheld.
Materials-Sourcing issues, overages, problems with color and texture, use of unapproved materials.
Data Management-Complicated spreadsheets, thousands of emails and so many skus your head is spinning.
How & What To Budget
While there is no magic formula for how much a system costs, the important thing to understand is how you’ll recoup costs over time. Even the coolest, most creative pop-up shops, the most thought out & rad tradeshow booth won’t add up to much if your margins are continually slashed due to inaccuracies in forecasting and misaligned landed costs, or worse yet, you’re losing customers to your competition because of your inability to deliver product on time.
If you’re struggling to sell the idea to your upper management or your board of directors, your best bet will be to start speaking with PLM providers, view their demos and let them help you. Selling the idea to upper management, or even justifying it to yourself becomes a fairly easy decision when you realize that making key decisions based on accurate, historical info could have massive impact to your bottom line.
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A Solution That Fits
FAN PLM delivers solutions that are built on the latest technology in the industry. A system that 75% of Fortune 500 companies rely on, and which the banking industry considers the only option. As Internet-based services go, our technology is built with our apparel, footwear and accessory customers in mind. Built to fit the way they do business, and not the other way around. Brands should expect a seamlessly integrated solution that talks to other systems, communicates effectively, is easy to use and will also grow as technology grows.
Fan PLM understands the real problems that are specific to the footwear and apparel industry. We deliver savings by offering in-depth analysis and a higher level of efficiency to the entire process. We’ve built our system to deliver maximum functionality to every user type in the footwear and apparel chain. We offer robust tools and automated workflows for generating XLS, PDF and Powerpoints. We keep the data flowing and stakeholders in the know, with a modular event based system that brings intelligent, real-time interaction between pages to alert users of critical fields, conditions that need to be met, and criteria-based reminders so that no one misses a beat.
FAN PLM will bring absolute transparency to your entire process of product development, empowering your whole team with the right tools to allow you to communicate effectively, and consistently.
