Archives

Growing Significance of Ecommerce ERP Integration: Why ECommcerce makes sense for Wholesale

Posted on by

According to a recent study by the Commerce Department, “web sales are rising rapidly every year. This is the fifth consecutive year in which the web sales increased by 15% or more”. Ecommerce has increased even faster during the Covid-19 pandemic. Changes that were probably going to take five to ten years, happened in just one or two years. For small and medium sized companies, it is hard to adapt to this very fast-changing world.

ECommerce is any channel that facilitates you to make online sales. Different channels include your own webstore run by Magento, Amazon, eBay or Shopify.

On the other hand ERP is a system that manages business data or back office operations for example NetSuite or Microsoft Dynamics AX or Microsoft Dynamics GP. ECommerce has become the number one platform that helps businesses increase their sales prospects.

If you are a wholesaler then you shouldn’t miss on eCommerce ERP integration, which is a must have if you want to streamline your sales and distribution.

Most wholesale companies rely on an accounting or ERP system combined or integrated with an inventory management solution to run their daily wholesale operation.

The need for eCommerce ERP integration is usually ignored because these type of integrations usually have a high cost and require careful planning to avoid business interruption caused by the change in existing computer systems. But the integration has a vital impact on your operations and customer experience.

Why it is Crucial for You Organization to Integrate eCommerce and ERP

  • It allow you to function more proficiently as a business. Your main processes – orders, inventory, customers, and shipping/tracking – are communicated effortlessly between your once independent systems. ECommerce and ERP integration has the capability to harmonize information between systems and enables them to co-operate with each other.
  • It trims down the hassles of manually entering data from one system to another. It saves time and lessens the errors, when entering order, inventory, item, and customer and shipping data.
  • ECommerce ERP integration lets you to easily account for new orders and process these orders without delay, regardless of where the sale is made.
  • Through this integration the tasks like products and pricing can be managed from one place which allows you to have precise and reliable information of the product.
  • With streamlined inventory synchronization you can track updates, and give exact inventory levels to customers, avoiding backorders, delays and reducing customer service load.
  • It automatically notifies the customers when orders have shipped and they can easily track the delivery of products.
  • When you run multiple business systems that are not integrated, many times the information does not match, resulting in mis-communication and repetitive bi-directional data entry. The integration of ECommerce and ERP eliminates these problems.

In today’s fast moving and competitive business world the integration of eCommerce and ERP is a requirement to wholesalers, just as it is to retailers. It improves the way in which your data is processed and it ultimately improves the company’s performance.

Are you seeking expert assistance for your fashion brand’s ERP requirements? Get in touch with InStyle today!

Apparel EDI: Changing the World of Fashion Industry

Posted on by

Fashion industry, to describe in the simplest form, is the business of making clothes. However, this illustration does not justice the clear distinction between clothing, fashion, and apparel. While apparel is functional clothing, fashion incorporates its own prejudices of style and individual taste to apparel. To take it to a further level, the fashion apparel industry is evolving at a rapid pace, especially over the last two decades. Highly changing dynamics of the industry have forced fashion apparel retailers to desire flexible designs, higher quality, and low cost. Meanwhile, apparel EDI (Electronic Data Interchange) is becoming a widely accepted practice for fashion and apparel manufacturers and wholesalers to remain competitive in an increasingly demanding global marketplace.

Let’s take a look at how apparel EDI is changing the world of the fashion industry.

EDI, as the name suggests, is the electronic interchange of structured data according to agreed message standards between computer systems. This information exchange is in the context of pure EDI that effectively proceeds without human intervention. While fashion professionals struggle with tight deadlines, top efficiency, and hiked margins, EDI allows companies to improve communication with B2B partners, to ultimately transfer the required data seamlessly and streamline the entire process within the given timeline.

Moreover, fashion companies are able to quickly get desired products to the market with reduced margins and improved efficiency. Manual data entry is time consuming and can naturally be associated with human errors. EDI automation, on the contrary, helps them save a lot of time as well as money – without manual errors. Since EDI enables fashion professionals to transfer their business documents quicker than ever, they can achieve their goals faster and more efficiently. It effectively cuts time from the order fulfilment cycle to accelerate information transfer and order processing.

Today’s fashion merchants are embracing the advantages of apparel EDI to improve inventory optimization and SCM integration. If you still haven’t recognized the necessity of incorporating EDI in your business processes, this is the right time to know that in such a globalized world, it’s critical to establish an electronic relationship with retailers and partners so as to expand your sales channels. In fact, you can hardly sell in the big leagues without EDI.

Advantages of Apparel EDI

  • Improved order accuracy
  • Better operational efficiency
  • Faster communication of critical information
  • Shorter order processing time
  • Lower transaction costs
  • Stronger customer relationships & improved customer service
  • Greater visibility to the global supply chain

Apparel EDI has become a vital part of the fashion industry, and a major player in determining the success or failure of a business.

Being a constantly evolving and ever changing industry, it’s absolutely imperative to adapt to the current market trends and the changes in the consumers’ buying behavior and patterns.

A recent trend seen in the fashion industry, and in plenty of other industries, is E-Commerce. E-Commerce is the sale of your products through online mediums (a website, for example). Companies that do not incorporate E-Commerce into their business are limiting themselves and their potential.

Instead of relying on clients having to go to your retail store and make their purchase there, they can simply look at your different products online and go through the entire purchasing process from the comfort of their home or office.

Apparel E-Commerce and fashion EDI go hand-in-hand. Implementing an E-Commerce business model in the fashion industry implies handling huge amounts of data and information, and having constant transactions between a lot of different (both internal and external) parties. Since wholesale EDI software helps companies manage and streamline their information, it becomes practically a necessity to incorporate some sort of apparel EDI to your business if you are adventuring into the E-Commerce world, or even if you’re already using E-Commerce in your business.

For this purpose, fashion companies incorporate apparel EDI into their day-to-day operations.

How does apparel EDI software help fashion companies?

EDI stands for Electronic Data Interchange, and it’s a simple electronic format made to replace paper-based documents. EDI allows for information transactions to happen seamlessly between different applications.

EDI helps companies with a lot of different elements of their information transactions, such as:

  • Sharing documents: Sharing documents is one of the most common administrative tasks apparel companies have to do, so it’s important to be able to do it in a way that is fast, easy, and reliable. EDI is a type of technology specifically built for this purpose.
  • Improving inventory visibility: linked to the previous point, EDI allows for all interested parties, both internal and external, to see the numbers in the different departments. For example, buyers can see an updated count of how many jackets are left in the warehouse.
  • Tracing documents: Making sure every involved agent can, at any point, know where the document is located and whether or not it has successfully reached its destination.
  • Accuracy: Since the possibility of human error is greatly reduced, EDI makes for much more accurate processes and transactions. Since every human error needs to be fixed, and therefore implies a cost, it becomes clear how much the perfect accuracy that EDI provides helps improve efficiency and productivity.
  • Cost effectiveness: as mentioned before, EDI automation heavily reduces the human involvement in information processing and management. This allows the previously involved manpower to be transferred to other sectors or tasks, therefore providing even more value.

It becomes clear that apparel EDI is the future of the industry, and a necessity for companies interested in staying competitive.

Are you seeking expert assistance for your fashion brand’s EDI requirements? Get in touch with InStyle today! Visit https://www.instylesoft.com

Conquer the Challenges in Apparel Wholesale with InStyle’s Apparel eCommerce

Posted on by

Are you a apparel wholesale entrepreneur? You might be well aware of the challenges that the market throws at wholesalers. The apparel industry is especially getting more competitive and fragmented. Apparel wholesalers often find it difficult to manage sourcing, finance, logistics, and operations. We’ve tried to help you through some quick tips so that you can take your wholesale business to wholesale success!

Cutting off from the supply chain

Since wholesale distributors are like a bridge between manufacturers and retailers, they face the biggest challenges these days because a majority of manufacturers and retailers have already started dealing directly, cutting off the need for wholesalers in between.

  • Consider offering some value-added advantages to your wholesale customers
  • Help them manage their apparel inventory by means of drop-shipping and vendor managed inventory
  • Try to streamline your shipping and fulfillment processes; add a shipping integration to your inventory management software

Cramped margins

According to studies, a typical wholesale distributor can achieve not more than 25% gross margin. And if manufacturers and retailers start dealing without having you in the process, it would be much more difficult for you to even gain that 25%.

  • Keep your prices for all apparel categories competitive to maintain the customer base
  • Avoid ending up with a dead stock; keep the inventory size based only on how much you can sell
  • Keep regular track of your customers’ inventory, monthly orders, changing purchase patterns

New technology challenges

Apart from finance and supply chain-related difficulties, there are a lot of challenges related to the evolving technology needs. To gain a competitive advantage, adopting state-of-the-art wholesale apparel eCommerce software is the best solution for your business. It is simple and highly effective.

  • Consider getting cloud-based inventory management software
  • Set up a B2B eCommerce portal

How InStyle Can Help?

InStyle provides a perfect apparel eCommerce solution, tailor made to suit your unique business needs, including wholesale pricing, visibility, and quantity/ordering restrictions. Since it is innovative, customizable, and flexible enough to manage inventory, orders, and pricing with high efficiency, this solution helps you make better decisions for bigger and better orders. Through integration with your existing ERP, it offers you incredibly personalized web environment.

Once you implement this apparel wholesale eCommerce software into your business processes, you’ll realize drastic changes, including seamless integration of fulfillment and warehousing, improved administrative efficiency, and reduced overhead.

Are you interested in implementing the eCommerce software in the process for the betterment of your wholesale business? Get in touch with us for expert advice and assistance.
Till then, wish you great luck with your wholesale endeavors!

How InStyle’s B2B eCommerce Software Solution Can Help You Win the Wholesale Apparel Game

Posted on by

Apparel is a globally spread, complex industry. The complexity of the supply chain is increasing day by day and wholesale distributors selling apparel are finding it extremely challenging to deal with the evolving processes. Though apparel wholesalers have already explored and chosen their own revenue channels on the web but selling apparel and clothing online is not as easy as it seems to be. It is quite a difficult job to keep the costs low every time. Every business has different criteria for its inventory and it often comprises of a wide range of SKUs.

While there are thousands of things to manage, the apparel industry has made its own way into the online environment. For almost a decade now, online stores selling clothing and other apparel are on the rise and they’re getting more business and multiple revenue channels at lower costs. If you wish to empower your wholesale business online, your efforts should start with finding out a perfect eCommerce solution, tailored to your fashion and apparel business. No matter you’re implementing the solution for the first time or simply need to upgrade the current solution, InStyle’s apparel eCommerce software can help.

Let’s take a quick look at how InStyle’s wholesale apparel eCommerce solution can help you win the game.

Our eCommerce solution is created and optimized with an easy-to-use CMS platform so that it suits best to high-fashion wholesale companies all over the globe. The approach is fully innovative, customizable, and flexible enough to manage inventory, orders, and pricing with high efficiency.

Through seamless integration with state-of-the-art ERP and SCM system, our eCommerce solution offers a host of interactive features.

  1. Merchandise, apparel, exclusive membership clubs
  2. Web 2.0 e-commerce
  3. Easy to implement and maintain
  4. Web Service integration with ERP’s
  5. SEO (Search Engine Optimization)

Exceptional benefits

  • Supports apparel as well as non-apparel businesses within the same implementation
  • Versatile design range, multi-lingual and multi-currency supporting
  • Web 2.0 features such as zoom, multiple images and dynamic inventory loading
  • Product integration and interfaces
  • Comments, ratings and user profile for web 2.0 solutions
  • Easy integration with your existing system
  • SEO-friendly layout
  • Single sign on module
  • Email blast service integration
  • Audio/Video playlists
  • XML input: inventory, products, and clients
  • XML output: orders, clients
  • MS Excel output: orders, clients
  • PDF output: orders

We understand your industry and business. We know that your business always has to deal with a complicated SCM process. 

  1. Our solution deeply integrates with your ERP and helps you manage the inventory and pricing more efficiently that ever
  2. Within a fully personalized web environment, you will be able to keep control over your own promotional offers as well as advanced pricing
  3. You will be able to mitigate all that comes along with the sales tax management

If you wish to take your wholesale eCommerce business to new level of success with our wholesale eCommerce software, please get in touch with InStyle experts today!

Defining the Worthiness of PLM for the Fashion Industry

Posted on by

Don’t you think that the fashion industry has achieved huge success today?

The reason behind its tremendous success is the utilization of software programs, designed to meet user’s demands the smarter way! The dynamics of this industry are changing dramatically.

Let’s particularly exemplify the importance of PLM software in fashion industry and how it is beneficial.

What is PLM?

PLM or Product Lifecycle Management is an information management system that can assimilate data, business systems, processes and finally people in an extended enterprise. The software allows you to manage vast information throughout the entire lifecycle of a product cost-effectively, from ideation and manufacture to design.

PLM for Fashion Industry

The world of fashion is surrounded by challenges. So, what do you think is the ideal way to maintain profits and plan for growth to meet the demands of modern consumers?

In this fast paced world, it is really important to get all the work done on time. Professionals need to deal with deadlines and time crunches all the time. However, fashion industry can be said quite an exception to this. It is because of the PLM software that the fashion industry is in safe hands. PLM helps organizations improve the way they manage their products. This software has gained tremendous popularity among apparel and textile manufacturers because it helps in organizing data and responding to new fashion trends quickly. In this highly competitive market, the software coordinates perfectly with customers and suppliers.

Rejoicing the Benefits

Check out some of the noteworthy benefits that the fashion world enjoys because of PLM.

  • Ensures that everyone is using the same data and are working on the same platform
  • Improves the internal and external communications
  • Helps in organizing the flow of data
  • Minimizes errors so that there are not as many merchandise returns
  • Improves cost structure and quality
  • Helps finished garments reach the market smoothly

Simplifying Your Task

The way this apparel PLM software works, is truly simple. The DNA of a product is collected in a file, which is also called spec. This file is accessible to everyone involved in garment production. The software helps everyone work on the same page saving money, time, as well as energy. It also reduces the use of heavy paperwork which usually takes more time to execute.

It is because of this software program that everyone is involved in the manufacturing process. The best part is that everyone stays up-to-date and can witness the progress of a product. This restricts manufacturing errors, fastens production and improves product quality. Using this software the right way will let you enjoy certain benefits. In the past, this software was accepted as a costly matter but gradually the industry realized its importance and how it can improve the business.

And today, no one can think of the apparel industry without this software!

Multivariate Approach Achieved through ERP in Apparel Industry

Posted on by

Factually, the fashion industry is considered as one of the biggest industrial sectors. Besides being highly competitive, it is equally volatile. In the last few years, we have seen a drastic change in apparel industry. To rank high in this competitive market, businesses are making use of several software systems. ERP is powerful and effective software for apparel industry that’s being used since years, to control a myriad of activities.

Why ERP?

In today’s economic environment, the use of ERP has become crucially important to cater to the demand of a business organization. Basically, the success of every business rests on three vital factors; strategic planning, organizational management, and proper monitoring of the operations. ERP integrates all the major functional units of a business into a unified system of operation that results in multiple benefits for your business.

ERP is used in garment industry with specific capabilities for apparel production, design, and supply chain management. The industry has become strongly dependent on ERP solutions as they are used for effective monitoring as well as control, scheduling orders, proper data predictions, and detailed information of orders.

Check out the list to know how ERP helps the Apparel Industry.

  • Production Planning and Control
  • CRM
  • Bill of Material
  • Cost Reporting
  • MRP
  • Shop Floor Control
  • HR Management
  • Service Management
  • Finance Management
  • Purchase Order Management
  • Quote Management
  • Inventory Management

The ERP Benefits

The apparel ERP software plays a vital role in determining the quality of a product. It allows the quality department to define its own quality test cases, essential at different juncture of production. The best part of using this software is that you can keep a track of the raw materials, the logistics, finished products and finances. With the right kind of tool like ERP, companies can have a niche space in the market.

The software plays an important role in strategic planning of a business organization that helps to set new goals and achieve new targets based on the requirement of the organization. The integrated system of this software helps in easy decision making and proper monitoring of the operations.

Henceforth, in future, we will get to see more such developments in the world of fashion industry. The growing demand for fashion apparels all over the globe is one of the strongest reasons why this sector is upgrading a lot.

Using EDI in Your Apparel Organization Makes Great Sense!

Posted on by

How long do you think fashion exists? Well, though no one is quite sure about the fashion scene; the “Fashion Industry” has been here for several years now. However, retailers have been a bit conservative regarding sale and payment. Fortunately, today’s fashion apparel retailers are very well aware of the technology, and often take it advantage so as to improve the supply chain integration and inventory optimization. After all, technology is must when it comes to establishing an effective and lasting electronic relationship with retailers and partners. It all eventually contributes to expanded sales and profit. One of the most popularly used technologies is the Apparel EDI – Electronic Data Interchange.

EDI is today a necessity in B2B interaction particularly in the Fashion Industry. Or to be straight forward, no one can sell in the big leagues without employing Apparel EDI. Considered to be the standard for data exchange, retailers generally use EDI to send important business documents and meet vendor compliance standards. There are a lot of things to look after, including orders, invoices, advanced shipping notices, and payments. Moreover, all of the largest E-commerce stores demand retailers to use EDI for engaging in a number of business transactions. Unlike manual keypunching, electronic data exchange can help improve efficacy, generate more profit, and save great on costs.

Why Using EDI Is Important for Your Organization?

  • Some EDI implementations incorporate a variety of functions such as merchants, IT, inventory, and accounting that offer integration across the entire supply chain
  • Facilitates drop shipping
  • Helps to update daily inventory levels with retailers
  • Helps to streamline the entire process and operations
  • Helps to save cost
  • Improves speed and accuracy
  • Enables businesses to automatically process information without any clerical tasks and data entry errors

So, being a small company, is it possible to successfully and profitably do business with big brand retailers? Certainly! Research well and make sure that you have the desired software in place that handles EDI integration.

The best feature of EDI is its ability to keep the information flowing directly to and from the applications. No wonder, it’s recognized as one of the most powerful business tools!

How Does the Textile Industry Benefit from Apparel ERP Software?

Posted on by

IT has become not only an essential but an indispensable tool for businesses today. As far as the textile industry is concerned, the number of newly emerging textile manufacturing units is increasing rapidly and most of them consider IT as a helping hand to their businesses. Lengthy processing sequences and increasingly complicated product mixes call for an efficient IT infrastructure. Composite mills dealing with weaving, spinning, sewing, and retailing are especially finding it critical to include ERP in their arsenal of tools. Although over 85% of the industry’s production units are small, the rising trend of opting for IT-related infrastructure is clear and is quite a positive sign.

The textile industry generally involves designing and manufacturing of clothes, distribution, and use of already manufactured fabrics. Business owners these days prefer to make their businesses more systematic and efficient. Here’s when ERP helps them! It doesn’t matter if you are in the fabric-to-garment segment, or the cotton-to-yarn, or yarn-to-fabric, or all of them; the Enterprise Resource Planning software – Apparel ERP software has everything covered to manage your entire business, end-to-end. An ERP system uses a relational database system that manages all the important parts of a business. The ERP solution particularly designed for the textile industry integrates all the business processes involving the critical eight areas of textile production planning – raw materials, finance, payroll, inventory, quality, sales, and plant management.

If you are looking forward to reducing your costs to a great extent, an apparel ERP software can help you the most. Apparel specific ERP software will help you cut costs significantly through online quality monitoring. Implementation of the right ERP software can also help you manage cut major costs in processing.

What Benefits Does ERP Solutions Offer Specifically to Textile Industry?

  • Manage key functions such as product planning, purchasing, inventory control, interacting with suppliers, providing customer service, and tracking orders quickly
  • Organized information for improved decision making – right from manufacturing, sales, finance, and data sharing
  • Delivery of the right information to the right people at the right time
  • More effective communication between coworkers, customers and vendors
  • Integrated business processes and people anywhere in your company & more efficient work flow
  • Improved productivity
  • Straight access to data & know the details of various stages the process is in
  • Streamlined business processes, minimized inventories, & maximized output

Is your business ready to use an Apparel ERP software and receive all these benefits? Reduce inventory levels, stop having to make embarrassing calls to customers and distributions because you are late. Prepare yourself for a well-executed, streamlined, smooth business operation using an apparel ERP software.

The Need of E-commerce in Apparel Fashion

Posted on by

It’s High Time to Realize the Need of E-commerce in Apparel Fashion

A fashion savvy teenager desperately wanted to buy some outfit of a particular fashion brand and be was not able to purchase it just because the brand store was not available in the local market. This incident happened a decade ago. The concept of E-commerce has so far ostensibly flattened every impossibility in the world of shopping!

No one would have believed that consumers would trust online shopping and would ever take to buy their needs online, especially fashion apparel. How wrong they turned out to be! Today, no one can deny that E-commerce has revolutionized the fashion industry in multiple ways.

A well-known fact says that online sales of apparel has surpassed all other categories and soared beyond expectation. However easy online shopping may be; ,online selling of apparel and clothing is much more challenging than one can imagine. Here’s when the need or fashion apparel E-commerce arises!

Women’s fashion apparel is one of the most profitable categories online – almost 20-22% of women shop online daily, which contributes about 58% of the total online spending!In 2016, online sales of fashion apparel will continue to be the fastest growing online category.
Let’s have a look at a few stat facts.apparel e-commerceEvery emerging brand or even an established brand must eventually consider launching their E-commerce presence. The first step is to frame a virtual store front,followed by implementing a turnkey E-commerce solution.It might offer almost 20-30% more profit – bypass wholesalers, sell directly to consumers, and get the entire margin between the retail price & the cost.

Having your own E-commerce store can help you in many ways; it offers you a lot of exposure to the competitive online world and helps your sales by building a great brand story.
When a particular type of garment is marketed on an E-commerce portal, visitors are bound to come across the name and When a particular type of garment is marketed on an E-commerce portal, visitors are bound to come across the name and become aware of the style and what the brand represents.
The category of clothing is tremendously popular as well as profitable, and the initial investment is lower than average.
An E-commerce website could be one of the major reasons for specific fashion apparel becoming trendy – may be vintage, wedding, spring, or summer collection.
Through your E-commerce store, you can even tap a potential customer base.
With just a couple of exclusive products on your E-store, you can create buzz through a unique experience for your visitors.
Your E-commerce store gives you many opportunities to interact directly with the users of your product, potentially giving you very valuable information.

However; to successfully and profitably operate your E-commerce site, an expert assistance is critical. ‘InStyle Software!’is your perfect software solution partner here! We provide turnkey apparel software solutions specifically designed for the fashion apparel industry. Our “InStyle Apparel Business Software”specifically designed for for apparel manufacturing and distribution companies, we cover the entire Product Life cycle Management including ERP, PDM, MRP, CRM, E-commerce and EDI.
From start to end, ‘InStyle!’ Apparel Software is there to help make your business more efficient.

InStyle Apparel Software ERP Releases New Version Fully Integrated with ECommerce Leader Magento

Posted on by

InStyle Apparel Software ERP Releases New Version Fully Integrated with ECommerce Leader Magento. We are providing the highest level of integration possible, with orders flowing in real time from the ecommerce website to the backend ERP. Our customers can take that order, and ship it right away, without delays. Customers that order online appreciate how fast their orders are shipped to them, which translates into positive reviews.

We also introduced a new wholesale interface for multi-level price lists by customer group and quantity.
For those not familiar with Magento, Magento is a powerful and flexible ecommerce and Content Management System. The Content Management System alows for additional non-product related content that are always present in a website.

Read the press release here: http://www.prweb.com/releases/apparel_software/2014_02/prweb11544527.htm

simple helix