In an interesting IT intervention, the fashion industry can now look forward to utilising IT services to predict future developments. Global IT services & solutions company, ITC Infotech has launched Style Performance Analytics (SPA) to cater specifically to the requirements of the fashion industry. Combining product attribute information from Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) tools with transactional data from Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) systems, SPA uses Business Intelligence (BI) tools to discover the styles and attributes that are most popular with customers. This allows designers to predict trends and design as per market need.
ITC Infotech’s SPA solution is designed to predict fashion trends with analysis drawn from historical data. The information is presented on a dashboard with drill down functionality for fact-based decision-making. With this solution both designers and merchandisers can access standardised data to take cues for forthcoming design element decisions. Furthermore, this solution also becomes a validation tool for the incorporation of new inspirations.
Mr. V V Rajasekhar, Senior Vice-President-PLM and Engineering Services, ITC Infotech, explains why the company decided to develop SPA. “When designing for the next season it would be fantastic to be able to predict the success of your design. We wanted a solution that could analyse past designs and bring out the aspects that have been popular and feed this information back into the design process. In this way, using fact-based decision making, the fashion line becomes more adapted to the customer’s preferences.”
SPA is based on the idea that a style is made up of an assortment of product attributes including colour, fabric, fit, trim and embellishments among others. The purchase decision is driven by one or more of these attributes. SPA breaks down the style into its individual design attributes and ranks them according to various metrics such as sell thru percentage, sales volumes etc. Visual dashboards enable designers and merchandisers to collate and understand how these attributes affect the popularity of styles, helping them to take informed decisions.
Mr Rajnish Kumar, Global Head – Softlines, ITC Infotech, explains the key concepts of SPA. “It is a powerful combination of PLM and ERP in a pre-configured solution, offering historical attribute analysis with visual representation via dashboards of standard and real-time data. This is one of the most critical value drivers of the solution because it offers a single platform to show standardised information to designers, merchandisers and buyers, so they are all using the same information to make their decisions. It reveals customer preferences to prompt the designer to decide what to do with that information. The businesses thereby get an edge which will allow their entire range to be sold with speeding inventory turns caused by higher sell-thru and with far lower mark downs.
ITC Infotech recently implemented PTC’s FlexPLM solution for Brooks Sports, a leading US based running company that designs and markets high-performance men’s and women’s running shoes, apparel and accessories in more than 40 countries worldwide. ITC Infotech and PTC have a long standing relationship that spans over a decade. Today, ITC Infotech helps PTC implement its projects around the globe, providing end-to-end services and support. ITC Infotech’s expertise in PLM (Product Lifecycle Management) is unparalleled, with over 850 implementations of PTC PLM products.
