Project Description
Selecting and implementing a costing solution to align with organizational workflow and existing product design applications.
The Client
The largest branded provider of baby and children’s clothing in the United States, marketing apparel under two of the most recognized and enduring brands in the nation.
The Challenge
The wholesaler/retailer currently negotiates the cost of goods with agents and factories using various Excel spreadsheets, with iterations exchanged via email. There is significant manual work required each season to consolidate the various offers received. Once a final cost is reached with a factory, the sourcing team must manually prepare the data to pass to their margin management and purchasing tools.
The company already owned licenses for a costing module within an existing supply chain application, and first explored taking advantage of its functionality. However, after exploring the existing functionality, numerous gaps were identified, modifications would be costly in both time and money, and the business users were unhappy with the cumbersome workarounds needed.
The Parker Avery Solution
The Parker Avery Group brought in extensive domain and application experience and quickly identified another costing solution that met the business requirements, allowing the users to manage their work in a logical and efficient flow. The new solution was configured and integrated with upstream product design applications. The solution was rolled out to the originally planned pilot group of users in three months for less than the cost of additional licenses and modifications that would have been required for the client’s existing supply chain application.
Key Parker Avery activities included:
- Defining future business processes and validating with business
- Preparing for and conducting the conference room pilot in conjunction with client resources
- Designing the future costing solution, system configuration, reporting requirements, and necessary enhancements to address any gaps
- Refining the project implementation plan
The Result
As a result of the implemented costing solution, management now has in-season visibility to sourcing margins and planned commitments. Standardized reporting is also now available without hours of reformatting and uploading various Excel spreadsheets each season, resulting in significant efficiencies in both productivity and data integrity.
