PLM(Product Lifecycle Management) solutions are becoming a favourite among the merchandisers. They play a crucial role in product development process and a simple mistake during this process can lead to great losses. A PLM helps to centralize information while allowing the users to have a smooth communication among the team. Let’s have a look at why merchandisers love PLM.
Reduce Repetitive Tasks
How many times have you had to redo a report because someone else had done a mistake or create it from scratch even though the data is available in an excel. With Auto-generating reports, easy uploading and file sharing and powerful search tools with criteria-based classification in PLM you wouldn’t have to go through the pain of redoing things again. Real time changes will reflect in the system so that whatever report you generate at a given time will be up to date. Your team will be able to focus on what they do best instead of recreating the same data again.
Useful Data Insights
During product development how will you figure out the success rate of the styles you have developed so far, how much you have succeeded with a given buyer and is it profitable to continue business with them? Instead of trying to extract data from different departments, you can generate customized reports which could give you the real reasons behind collection failures and profitability of each buyer. You will be able to predict collections that would be a success based on the historical data and focus on better collections to create better profit margins.
Real time end to end workflow monitoring
As a merchandiser more than half of your time is wasted in trying to figure out the status of each order, where exactly does it lie and making sure all orders are processed smoothly. Keeping up with the buyer’s changes as well as running behind suppliers is a part of your daily routine. This can be overwhelming if your data is scattered in different emails and excels for different orders. A PLM can give you an overall view of what is happening with an order. Tasks that are pending, milestones that were achieved and the potential time delays that can occur are predicted using data. You will never have to go behind team members asking for an update again.
Help Suppliers Keep Up
Merchandisers are the main link between different vendors and the product development team. You are the one to be blamed if a fabric doesn’t turn up on time or some sample goes missing on the way. How can you make sure that your suppliers keep up with all of the orders? A PLM can give access to real-time updates to the suppliers and they can adjust technical specs, product samples and material orders as changes take place in product development which leaves you with enough data to avoid missed deliveries which would cost you time and money down the line.
Work Anywhere, anytime
The coronavirus pandemic really showed us the need to work remotely. Most of the PLM solutions are cloud based and it would allow the users to work from anywhere in the world as long as an internet connection is available. Be it getting a buyer’s feedback from US or communicating a request to a supplier in China or messaging a colleague who is working from home, merchandisers have to deal with people across the globe at different time zones. With a collaborative platform such as PLM users could log into the system anytime, anywhere to communicate in real time. The buyers could send real time updates of the fit samples for the merchandisers and the manufacturing plant to manage the changes. Be it in a coffee shop or at home, you could work from anywhere to complete your work.
