Fashion Retail-in-a-Box is new solution package offered by Fortude across the US, Europe, Australia, NZ and Asia. It is targeted at small and medium sized fashion businesses that produce and sell fashion. As a starting point, the company has taken the Infor Accelerator for CloudSuite Fashion. It has also enhanced the product so that Fashion retailers are able to select the Infor solution and then rapidly implement it.
Why is this needed ? The fashion industry, like many others, is undergoing constant change. Fashion has always undergone change from one season to the next. Today the ways in which customers engage with their chosen brands seems to evolve almost as fast. Visual search, image recognition and augmented reality are just three technologies that are changing the face of retail from the historic bricks and mortar stores.
Who are Fortude?
Fortude has worked with Infor for more than ten years, It has delivered M3 solutions into numerous global brands such as HH Brown, a subsidiary of Berkshire Hathaway and Brandix, a Sri Lankan fashion manufacturer for brands clothing across the globe. Brandix is also Fortude’s parent company. Fortude is a global Infor Alliance Partner and Technology Solutions Provider that believes the combination of solutions that Infor can provide plays well in the fashion market.
Speaking on the launch of the solution Fortude’s Bob McKee, SVP – Americas said, “Our experience with our parent, a large global Fashion conglomerate, supplemented by multiple Fashion implementations across the world, gives us an edge when looking into industry-specific functionality. We wanted to look at building an environment that includes key components essential for scalability, whilst helping businesses stay ahead. With Fashion Retail-in-a-box, a business can go-live in 5 months, a significant reduction in ERP implementation time. Fashion Retail-in-a-Box aims to be the ‘ideal solution’ for all Fashion retailers looking for a pre-built ERP.”
What is Fashion-Retail-In-a-box
Fashion-in-a-Box enables Fortude to implement CloudSuite Fashion and other integrated applications faster than ever before. Infor CloudSuite Fashion consists of Infor M3 and Infor Fashion PLM which became part of the CloudSuite Fashion solution in 2016. It also links to Infor Nexus, the supply chain network. Fashion Retail-In-a-box provides customers with a preconfigured, but adjustable, ready to go ERP solution for fashion retailers. Fortude highlights several advantages of the solution including:
- Omni channel functionality: Drawing on its experience, Fortude ensures that the modern fashion retailer is able to work across store, social media, the web and other channels.
- User experience enhancing features: These leverage leverage the Infor collaboration platform Infor Ming.le underpinned by Infor ION, its integration platform.
- Integration between M3 and other Infor products such as PLM, Birst, Infor Demand Management and Infor Nexus.
- Analytics: Leveraging Birst FRIAB it delivers preconfigured analytics dashboards that deliver a rapid time to value.
In a podcast, Enterprise Times spoke to Bob Mckee, SVP Americas, Fortude about the solution and state of Fashion Retail. In it, McKee confirmed that the solution will enable retailers to go live far faster than a traditional ERP implementation. It will help to simplify the ERP implementation process with the combination of best practices and consultancy services at a fixed price.
One size fits all
The solution is suitable for retailers from three stores to more than 100. It delivers a solution that enables those companies to grow rapidly and scale even further. In summary, FRIAB is a crystallisation of the knowledge that Fortude has gained through many installations of CloudSuite Fashion. Perhaps surprisingly, there are no launch customers that have leveraged the solution yet.
Infor also announced the next generation of Accelerators with Fashion due to launch in Q2 2020. ET asked McKee what this means. McKee said that as Fortude delivers more benefits the company would also look to include the business process mining that will be built into the Infor Intelligent Accelerator 4.0.
Corey Toleffson, Senior Vice President & General Manager at Infor (Retail) commented: “The difference that the Fortude guys have is the fact that they have been living Fashion Apparel for longer than anybody that I am aware of that’s an Infor partner. They know the features and functions that need to be specifically turned. They have the deepest experience of deploying Infor Fashion Retail Apparel in the Industry in our ecosystem with Infor.”
Enterprise Times: What does this mean
This is the kind of entrepreneurial solution that Infor needs from its partner ecosystem. Fortude has taken its expertise and packaged it to help shorten implementation times. This will also reduce the cost of sale bringing a faster time to value for its customers. This should enable Fortude to grow faster and, in turn, help Infor win a higher number of sales.
