Written by Kim MacIntosh, Senior VP - North America

With summer officially over, the attune team is looking forward to the next couple of months where we will be on the road and meeting you at several events. The first being the ASUG Apparel Footwear and Fashion (AFF) SIG meeting at Columbia Sportswear headquarters. We’re looking forward to meeting fashion IT leaders at this year’s meeting. One of the hot topics is going to be around SAP S/4HANA for Fashion and how to make the transition to the new platform.

Any time a sales order comes in, there is a requested quantity, time, and location. Fashion companies need to know this information to understand whether they can fulfill the request. But it’s often not just a simple check of inventory and fulfillment — there are many factors to consider: What if the order changes at the last moment? What if something happens in the production process that could potentially affect delivery? With a first-come, first-served (FCFS) strategy, are orders from the top customers getting fulfilled in time over lower-priority orders?

Written by Harin Nanayakkara, Chief Marketing Officer - attune

Over the past few years, we have been discussing extensively about the on-going digital revolution and the need for Fashion & Retail companies to make a fundamental shift in core systems to be able to respond to the demands of modern markets. Today, we are taking another step towards equipping fashion brands with a powerful digital core in their journey of becoming true digital players.

Introducing attune Fashion Suite™ - Proven Accelerator for SAP S/4HANA for fashion and vertical business

With the introduction of SAP S/4HANA for fashion and vertical business, SAP broke ground by building a complete vertically integrated real-time solution, which incorporates retail, wholesale and manufacturing operations. From planning, procurement, sales through to online and offline channels, vertical integration on SAP S/4HANA helps ensure that these processes are fully harmonized, whether the products are being sold in a department store or in a flagship store.

At attune, we were fortunate to be a part of that journey; working closely with the SAP teams in running acceptance tests and providing product feedback. The new solution inherited much of its functionality and thinking from SAP Fashion Management; a co-innovation initiative between SAP, attune and a few select customers. FMS was built with the notion of unifying wholesale, retail and manufacturing to enable a vertically integrated business model and omni-channel customer experience. S/4HANA fashion is the next evolution of this effort; built from the ground up natively on the HANA platform. This further simplifies processes and adds new capabilities needed to run in a digital world.

This blog post is a part of our blog series on the use cases of SAP S/4HANA, designed to offer a closer look at the value behind a digital core powered by SAP S/4HANA for Fashion. Click here to read the previous post on The Role of SAP S/4HANA For Fashion and Vertical Business in Order Fulfillment.

Welcome back to our use case series on SAP S/4HANA Fashion. This time, we will be looking at selected use cases on Inventory Management with SAP S/4HANA Fashion and how the solution enables fashion brands to manage stocks more profitably with greater visibility into real-time inventory across wholesale and retail.

attune is excited to lead fashion brands into the digital age. We are currently spearheading 4 out of 7 global SAP S/4HANA for Fashion and Vertical Business implementations.

This blog series will take an in-depth look at the capabilities of SAP S/4HANA for Fashion and the significant role it plays in executing seamless and frictionless order orchestration and fulfillment for fashion companies.

Visibility into item availability on any shelf in any channel is a dream that many retailers have been chasing. As majority of retailers still grapple with achieving real-time inventory visibility, we’re already seeing retail leaders move one step further by offering multiple order fulfillment services including “buy online, pick up in-store” (BOPIS) and “buy online, return in store” (BORIS).

As profitable order management becomes critical to a fashion business, it becomes paramount to overcome challenges that arise from inefficient and disconnected processes – which heavily impacts profit margins and customer experiences to a degree that no retailer can afford. 

Let us have a closer look at how SAP S/4HANA for Fashion omnichannel capabilities empowers retailers to deliver what their customers want quickly, efficiently, and at the lowest possible cost - for both the fashion retailer and the customer.

The National Retail Federation Big Show 2018 wrapped up recently, but the insights that were shared will make their mark throughout the coming year. Judging by the overall excitement, engaging discussions, and innovative retail technologies showcased at the booth, it is safe to say that the retail industry is definitely not in an apocalyptic phase.

Update: SAP will be releasing new information relating to the migration from SAP AFS to SAP S/4HANA for Vertical Business. Keep checking this space for the latest updates.  

Our video demonstrates how you can migrate from SAP AFS to SAP S/4HANA for Fashion and Vertical Business regardless of whether or not you have SAP HANA Finance. 

With the release of S/4HANA Fashion, business and IT leaders may have several questions on the new solution as they consider switching to the new SAP S/4HANA business suite. 

In our conversations with global fashion brands, one of the most common questions asked is what happens to custom code when migrating to S/4HANA Fashion? In our latest video, Vinod Kumar, Solutions Director at attune who played an integral role in managing attune’s co-innovation partnership on the design, proof of concept and development of SAP Fashion Managment, delves deeper in how fashion companies can migrate their custom code to S/4HANA Fashion.

Fashion companies across the globe, regardless of size or geography are all facing the same economic headwinds - disruption in the form of competitive threats and new opportunities coming at an unprecedented pace. The answer for meeting these challenges is innovation - both in terms of business as well as the underlying technology that enables those processes.