Customers are becoming increasingly demanding and expect to be offered innovative styles and good quality at attractive prices — that too an ever more frequent basis. The fashion players, therefore, need to find new ways to secure growth and profits, while ensuring end-customer satisfaction. Tactics based simply on reducing product development and manufacturing costs are no longer sufficient to maintain competitive advantage. As fashion brands and retailers attempt to improve profits, cash flow and consumer loyalty, they need to continually introduce newer concepts, and also add value to their own private labels.

Many fashion brands and retailers have been continuously putting in efforts to reduce their product development time. In a rapidly evolving marketplace, speed is of essence, and serves as a catalyst for bringing about a newness and exclusivity in the product — increasing the flexibility and responsiveness within the organisation and its supply chain. Moreover, product quality has to be maintained to reduce returns and charge backs.

Effective management of the sourcing function is an important variable in achieving these objectives. In order to remain competitive, many companies are identifying, developing, and placing production with capable business partners globally. Some of the factors to be kept in mind include geo-political stability, reliability and quality of certain infrastructure components, such as transportation systems, transfer pricing arrangements, tax incentives and issues, access to high quality management talent, and exposure to environment and labor issues.

Product Lifecycle Management (PLM), as a business strategy, is steadily gaining wide acceptance amongst fashion brands and retailers. Companies that took initial approach to PLM are beginning to see significant reductions in new product introduction lead times, and are enjoying more profits. PLM is not just a set of technologies, but a strategic business approach that integrates people, processes, business systems, and information.

Through the use of D.R.A.P.E.D., engaging with a customer on a fresh implementation becomes far speedier. We have experienced a 20-25 percent improvement in implementation cycles through the use of this proprietary tool. As a result of this, customers are able to leverage the benefits from their new PLM investment in their business workflow very quickly.

Is the PLM solution for the fashion industry capable of integrating with existing design software and third-party tools?
PLM is an established tool to manage the process and innovation, and to speed up product development for an enterprise. Though it is a specialised application by itself, it needs to co-exist along with several other applications in an enterprise. Some of the common applications that exist could include Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) tools, Supply Chain Management (SCM) systems, design tools, and other specific point applications, that the organization has been using over the years.

The capability of different PLM systems to integrate with other existing tools and applications varies. Each PLM application has its own set of ‘plug-n-play’ integration adapters. However, in most instances, a solution can be worked out. Depending on the customer need, and the capability of the PLM software, an integration solution is defined and implemented for specific customer requirements.

Geometric, because of its vast expertise with multiple PLM systems and also its large end-customer implementation experience, can provide solutions to meet customer’s specific integration needs.

How does the PLM solution deal with multiple employees working from different locations on the same project — in terms of ease of collaboration, versioning and the language barrier?
Most PLM solutions offer various collaboration tools to speed productivity, and increase efficiency of the design/innovation process.  With PLM systems implemented, all participants in the design/innovation process work on a single integrated repository, which has role/hierarchy-based access to different sets of information. Duplication/versioning is completely avoided. The entire organisation works towards meeting product development deadlines, and on an integrated ’single version of the truth.’
Depending on the location of the participants, different PLM applications also provide different language interfaces, so that the local user feels very comfortable and can contribute effectively.
 
Are PLM solutions being adopted by smaller apparel companies? Does Geometric see the need to create more awareness of the benefits of such a solution for the apparel industry?
PLM solutions can be adopted by companies of all sizes. However, it provides real differentiated value, when operations are otherwise difficult to manage. For very small apparel companies, most part of the innovation process can still be tracked and managed manually. In such a scenario, a PLM solution fails to provide the true ROI. However, for an organisation to scale and meet global requirements, PLM provides significant value and benefits.

When it comes to improving or changing a PLM solution to align with the industry’s needs, how does Geometric go about accomplishing this?
Every PLM solution has its own specialties, and has its own sets of unique features and functionalities that it provides. For an organisation to truly leverage the benefits of their investments in PLM system, it needs to be configured/customised for that particular organisation.
Geometric goes about this exercise in a systemic manner. As a part of the D.R.A.P.E.D. framework, we have an effective combination of tools and templates that help us to capture the customer expectations precisely, in the form of detailed requirements. Based on these detailed requirements and an analysis of how best to implement PLM for a specific organization, we go about the entire exercise of implementation and deployment for a specific customer.

We work closely with our customers and walk them through a set of recommendations and its implications, and based on customer preferences, plan to implement the same at their site.

Can you share details on the sort of growth that Geometric has achieved over the last few quarters?
We have seen significant traction on the PLM solution in apparel in the U.S. and European region. The concept is picking up in India as well in the Asia-Pacific region. We are expecting a lot of action in the Indian region in times to come.

Could you name some of the companies that have opted for Geometric’s solutions — small companies as well as established brands in India. Any interesting facts that you would like to share with us?
Geometric has been working with leading international fashion as well as retail brands in managing their IT requirements. These have been in sectors like apparel, footwear, leather goods, sports goods, mountaineering equipment, innerwear and lingerie. Due to our confidentiality agreements, we would not be able to mention the brands.

Geometric has entered into a partnership with Gerber Technology. Could you elaborate on this alliance?
Geometric is an independent services company, offering solutions on leading technology platforms. Apart from bringing in more efficiencies and value into our PLM implementation, we are also actively offering assessment and consulting services, helping customers arrive at their PLM decisions.