Clothing & Footwear Experts

Why a clothing and footwear specific IT solution verses a generic solution?

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    t: +44 (0)1925 849000 e: protex.marketing@datelgroup.com

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    Here we highlight how Protex, a solution suite specifically designed for clothing and footwear businesses delivers significantly more business benefits compared to a generic commercial solution.

    Product Setup and Administration

    Products are easily setup in seconds whether there are multiple, colours, sizes and fits. The individual SKU’s are generated automatically. EAN codes can also be generated automatically for the created SKU’s. Typically this reduces the work to setup new products for a new season compared to a generic system. All product information is viewed via a matrix on orders, purchase orders, picking, packing, returns etc. which quickly provides a clear picture of the stock or supply of a product across the size range.

    Seasonality

    Seasonality is an intrinsic part of the system, a product, customer order, price list can be for a particular season. The reporting/planning functions incorporates season. For example if you wanted to search for all customer orders for autumn/winter spring/summer 2017 to calculate the material requirements, it is one simple click in the make-to-order planning function.

    Costing

    Costs can be built up in the system for a product, these costs can include a factory make price, the cost of any materials in the purchase currency, recalculated to a base currency, plus any additional costs such as carriage, insurance duty etc. This cost is used in margin enquires to view the profitability of a range, an order, or invoiced sales. The cost can vary by colour for a product.

    Bill of Materials

    If materials are used either for the calculation of requirements to buy or for costing, the Bill of Materials function can capture either an average rating or a size level rating which will be used in the calculation of materials that are required to support the customer orders.

    Forward Ordering for a Season

    We have a concept of forward ordering for a season within the system. It is very straight forward to group orders together for a new season for production planning purposes.

    Material Purchase and Finished Product Planning

    Make-to-order planning enables a user to plan what materials are required to cover the products ordered across multiple customers. From within the make-to-order planning function the user can see what materials are required to cover the customer orders for a particular make up factory. If there is any stock held of the required materials at that factory these will be visible and taken into the calculation. The user from within the same screen can raise Purchase Orders for fabric for instance to a mill for delivery to a makeup factory, as well as separate Purchase Orders for finished products.

    When a finished goods Purchase Order is raised, it is typically (but doesn’t have to be) linked to the customer orders that have created the demand for this finished good Purchase Order. Through this linkage the user has visibility when a customer’s order will be due based on the incoming finished Purchase Order due date. This information can also be shared via the b2b Customer Web Portal.

    If materials are required to make a finished product the materials can be allocated to the finished good Purchase Order. When the finished products are finally received into your warehouse, the materials calculated from the BOM for the products received are deemed to have been consumed and the material stock at the factory is adjusted accordingly.

    RM Availability

    This is an enquiry which tells the user what materials are available at which factory and how much of that material is available. From this enquiry it is possible to see what orders can be met by a particular factory and if there is any incoming material on a Purchase Order to that factory. This helps in assisting where a finished Purchase Order should be placed, as there is clear visibility of materials. This can be seen either by product, factory or across all products and factories.

    Make-to-Stock Planning

    If you have stock lines that go from season-to-season, we provide some different planning functions including Make-to-Stock Planning which enable you to review sales history for a product/product colour/product type and use that history to suggest what the stock cover should be for a defined period looking forward. This also takes into consideration the calculation of material requirements.

    Reporting

    The reporting across the Protex system is at product/product colour/SKU level across all reports/enquiries including season, with the ability to export all data to Excel.

    B2B

    We have a Customer Web Portal which enables independent retailers to place stock orders and forward orders. Customers can view their live stock position (if you want them to), their back order position with expected delivery dates, outstanding invoices/balances and their current credit position. They can also track the delivery of their order from the carrier reference that is fed into Protex.  This solution provides a major saving in sales administration with the customer service team.

    EDI

    We integrate with the GXS network http://www.gxs.co.uk/products/edi/freeway so if you work with large retailers, amazon, Selfridges etc. you can use this platform to receive orders into Protex directly and send electronic invoices back.

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