How to catch up with your customers

1. Faster
Fashion:
how to catch up with
your customersh o w t o c a t c h u p w i t h
y o u r c u s t o m e r s
F a s t e r F a s h i o n :

2. © 2 0 1 5 SAP SE o r a n SAP a f f i l i at e c o m pa n y | 2
G e t t i n g i n t o t h e c o n s u m e r ’ s s l i p s t r e a m
f a s t e r f a s h i o n
Every element of fashion retail – from manufacturing to supply, marketing, and sales –
is geared toward overtaking today’s high-speed consumers, or at least getting into their
slipstream. Up close is the only place to be; from here, retailers can adjust to shoppers’
pace, read their signs and respond accordingly, and be pulled along by their energy.
Reading customers up close is what enables fashion houses to keep pace and drive
their merchandising activities across the entire product lifecycle. From design concept
to manufacturing in far-flung factories, from ship to store, from opening price to final
markdown, in every channel, and across established and emerging markets.
To get close to customers, fashion brands and retailers must adopt technology models
and platforms that integrate their processes in a way that boosts revenue and margins.
Multispeed fashion relies on efficiency and agility at each stage of the journey, from
runway to rails.
T h i s g u i d e s h ows b u s i n e s s e s h o w to m e e t t h e s e o b j ect i v e s , ac c e l e r at e a h e a d o f
c u sto m e r d e m a n d s , a n d f i r m ly s e t t h e fa s h i o n ag e n da o n l i n e a n d i n - sto r e .

3. C o n s i d e r t h e c o m p l e x i t y
o f a r e t a i l m a r k e t r u n b y c o n s u m e r s
f a s t e r f a s h i o n
Who’d be a fashion retailer? What once seemed simple – sell well-designed clothing to lots of people – has actually become very complex.
Challenge Change Impact
Multiseason
Brands are now almost continuously designing,
introducing, and fading ranges.
Consumers are buying fashion not only by season, but by occasion
and even by mood. They are matching luxury items bought for life with
mass-market garments that have a shorter shelf life.
Multiproduct
In addition to merchandising core ranges, fashion
clothing brands are increasingly extending into
housewares, branded merchandising, footwear,
and ranges unique to a single channel.
Tightly managed and protected names can soon unravel if the
brand promise is broken through these extensions.
Multichannel
Retailers are operating online, offline, wholesale,
franchise, and by mail order. Each channel has its
own unique requirements, often with individual
processes, systems, and business goals.
Customers want to shop seamlessly across and between touch points,
starting who knows where and finishing who knows when.
Multifulfillment
The range of delivery and fulfillment options
is increasing, reflecting the variation in consumer
demands.
Retailers are rethinking profit options – if I deliver this item to a loyal customer
but lose all my profit on the deal, will I win in the longer term by keeping
their business? Can my current IT system answer the question fast enough
to determine whether the customer is worth the investment?
Multiservice
Customers want to be served in flexible ways,
making it harder to stereotype or pigeonhole behavior.
Retailers are losing business not necessarily as a result of bad service,
but because they can’t read customers, and therefore aren’t hitting the mark.
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4. H o w t o m a k e c o m p l e x
s m a r t e r , f a s t e r , a n d s i m p l e r
f a s t e r f a s h i o n
Being able to understand the customer enough to respond to and even preempt their
needs is clearly the biggest challenge facing retailers right now. For fashion retailers,
the challenge is even greater, because the decisions made in the design studio will take
an entire sales cycle to pay off or fail.
To squeeze every last drop of profit from stock, fashion retailers need agility and
responsiveness in manufacturing, supply chain, merchandising, and promotion.
The answer is not to add more complexity, but to refine the process.
Make it smarter, faster, and simpler.
Integrate the process and make each element collaborate toward a common goal:
getting closer to customers.
This requires a rethink of the roles and responsibilities within IT and the wider business,
and the systems and processes that support those roles. Currently, retailers are battling
with the consequences of siloed operations, which involve:
• Multiple agendas
• Multiple versions of the truth
• Multiple pools of disintegrated point technology that cannot serve the
overall goals of the business
• Insight delivered after the opportunity has gone
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5. R u n n i n g s i m p l e r m e a n s t h i n k i n g t o g e t h e r
f a s t e r f a s h i o n
Smart retailers are tackling these problems by building an integrated model
for management, where IT is a true enabler. They are creating this model not
departmentally but centrally, to ensure that IT, operations, and marketing are
equipped with the right data and tools to strengthen customer relationships
in the following ways:
Rather than worrying that the weight of existing systems and hundreds of
interfaces will slow them down, retailers can manage their costs and risks by using
a suite of integrated solutions in the cloud to drive expansion into new markets.
W i t h t h i s m o d e l , w h o l e s a l e , sto r e , e - c o m m e r c e , a n d f r a n c h i s e o p e r at i o n s c a n w o r k o n a s i n g l e ,
v e r t i c a l p l at fo r m ac c e s s i n g t h e s a m e m a st e r data , g lo b a l i n v e n to ry, a n d p r o c e s s e s .
M a r k e t i n g
wants insight to understand the customer better so it can improve
promotions in-store and online.
O p e r at i o n s , e- c o m m e r c e ,
a n d s u p p ly c h a i n
want data that enables them to manage orders and deliver better
across all channels.
IT
wants to be able to control all data across every channel so it can deliver
value back to the business.
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6. ›
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D i st r i b u t i o n C e n t e r s
W h o l e s a l e
o r E x t e r n a l
C u sto m e r s
T h i r d - pa r t y
lo g i st i c s
p r ov i d e r s
E- c o m m e r c e
sto r e sS u p p l i e r s
Brand and
merchandise
management
Sourcing,
procurement, and
manufacturing
Human resources
Finance
Information technology
Technology and platform
Supply
chain
Omnichannel
customer
experience
T h e b u i l d i n g b l o c k s f o r f a s t e r f a s h i o n
f a s t e r f a s h i o n
An integrated model has agility built
in, enabling mixed models to achieve
different goals, depending on where
the retailer is on its growth curve.
The most successful fashion brands
and retailers use the flexibility of
their integrated solution to manage
models operating at different speeds
and multiple season types. This
flexibility creates the capacity to run
a global business with the dynamism
of a startup – to meet the unique
demands of customers in each
market.
Where an individual retailer or brand
starts its technology journey should
depend on where they are on their
business journey to getting where the
customer wants to go. For instance,
a fashion brand looking for growth
in new territories may want to get a
big reach while mitigating risks and
costs, and so it is starting online
before thinking about physical stores.
For others, meanwhile, the focus may
be on sourcing, procurement,
and manufacturing to boost margin
through optimization of these
processes.
I n b ot h t h e s e c a s e s , t h e r e ta i l e r r eq u i r e s a s o f t wa r e s o lu t i o n
t h at h e l p s i t b u i l d t h e b lo c k s o f fa st e r fa s h i o n , s o i t c a n ta k e c u sto m e r s
w h e r e v e r t h e y wa n t t h e i r j o u r n e y to g o – a s t h e f i g u r e d e m o n st r at e s .
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Figure: A Flexible, Integrated Solution for Faster Fashion

7. As a result of its SAP® solution, Luxottica has benefited from:E x a m p l e :
Lu xot t i ca G r o u p
H o w f a s h i o n r e t a i l e r s g e t c l o s e r
t o c u s t o m e r s
f a s t e r f a s h i o n
© 2 0 1 5 SAP SE o r a n SAP a f f i l i at e c o m pa n y | 7
From athletes to movie stars,
CEOs, and librarians, Luxottica
eyewear has been changing
perspectives and defining
style for over half a century.
To sustain profitable growth for
the future, the group turned to
SAP to optimize the functionality
and transparency of its key
manufacturing systems.
“ T h a n k s to SAP M a x A t t e n t i o n , w e a r e n o w g e t t i n g t h e m o st o u t o f SAP A p pa r e l
a n d Fo ot w e a r a n d s u c c e s s f u l ly l a u n c h e d i t i n 1 1 p l a n ts .
A n d w e s a f e ly m i g r at e d data f r o m o u r SAP ERP a p p l i c at i o n to ot h e r syst e m s ,
i m p r ov i n g syst e m p e r fo r m a n c e , data m a n ag e m e n t, a n d ac c e s s .”
Roberto Corradini, IT Director for Demand and Business Re-Engineering, Operation Division, Luxottica Group S.p.A.
5 0 %
p e r fo r m a n c e i m p r ov e m e n t
i n k e y m a n u fact u r i n g
f u n ct i o n a l i t y
5 0 %
i m p r ov e m e n t i n d i a lo g
r e s p o n s e t i m e
2 h o u r
r e d u ct i o n i n da i ly
r u n t i m e fo r c r i t i c a l
w h o l e s a l e b atc h j o b s
1 ,0 0 0
a d d i t i o n a l e m p loy e e s
w i t h p o s i t i v e u s e r
e x p e r i e n c e

8. f a s t e r f a s h i o n
© 2 0 1 5 SAP SE o r a n SAP a f f i l i at e c o m pa n y | 8
G e t c l o s e r t o y o u r c u s t o m e r s
Created in partnership with leading fashion retailers,
SAP Fashion Management helps companies get closer to
their customers by:
About SAP
SAP’s vision is to help the world run better and
improve people’s lives. Our solutions are used
by more than 12,200 international retailers,
including 10 of the top 10 most admired apparel
and footwear retailers in the world.*
Learn more:
www.sap.com/solution/industry/retail
*Source: SAP analysis of Forbes 2000 rankings
(May 2013) and SAP customer database as of March 2014.
The SAP Fashion Management application offers a
complete fashion solution that helps retailers run simpler
right now. It enables businesses to remove organizational
siloes, establish best-business processes, and create an
information-driven culture.
• Breaking down the barriers and inefficiencies across
sales channels with a single, real-time solution
• Increasing the speed of range introduction and
improving targeting to channels and sales locations to
maximize sales potential
• Providing up-to-the-minute visibility across all partners
to expedite deliveries to match customer need

9. www.sap.com/contactsap
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