Case Study
Leading worldwide fashion brand enhances allocation management with UST, SAP and agile methodology
OUR CLIENT:
Our client is one of the world’s leading apparel companies, with 13K+ employees and products sold in more than 50,000 retail stores in 110+ countries worldwide.
THE CHALLENGE:
Lack of standardized solution creates allocation management challenges
Our client approached UST with the challenge of managing a complex customer order process often constrained by long lead times. In an omnichannel retail apparel business, the client’s ability to respond to changing demand is critical, and they needed a solution to ensure that supply shortfalls would be more evenly shared across their customer base. At the time of engagement, each of the client’s regions had separate solutions and processes for managing customer orders and supply allocation. They needed a global solution to standardize company-wide processes while also refining regional forecast accuracy and inventory management efficiency.
THE TRANSFORMATION:
Software solution functionality enhanced with agile methodology
When the client first partnered with UST, the SAP solution used by the client did not offer the specialized functionality they required. Specifically, the client needed the ability to allocate supply during the order-taking process in various regions, check against actual supply, and manage customer allocation constraints at the style-color level.
UST led the client through a phased design and deployment approach to create a custom Product Allocation and Rescheduling solution in SAP AFS, leveraging the agile methodology to deliver incremental value releases. New functionality was continuously released across all regions while accounting for local differences. A common codebase was introduced giving each region the benefit of improvements in a short period of time. Post-implementation, UST continued to work with the client on onboarding all products into each of the client’s regional portfolios.
THE IMPACT:
Data-driven decisions yield better market penetration and higher customer trust
The client is now able to make intelligent, business-rules based calculations of supply reservation quantities based on data-driven factors like aggregated demand forecasts, order information, and available or projected supply. They have fast, flexible response capabilities to changing supply and demand scenarios, and supply constraints are strategically shared across all customer bases, providing better overall market penetration and higher levels of customer trust.
EXPERTISE & RESOURCES
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SAP Services and Enterprise Solutions| UST
Retail Consulting Services and Transformation Solutions | UST