CIMdata PLM Industry Summary Online Archive

16 January 2012

Implementation Investments

Hitachi Consulting UK Helps Boden Assess Global Product Lifecycle Management Solutions to Support Strategic Growth

Leading UK retailer, Boden, has engaged Hitachi Consulting UK to work with its senior commercial directors to facilitate a review of the company’s product lifecycle processes to support market expansion, product diversity and global growth. The process review examines the impact on the business and its strategic direction, including garment design, sourcing, product development, and critical path tracking.

Boden continues to buck the economic trend, experiencing substantial growth in several markets. As a result of its on-going growth, the company needed to review its current product lifecycle management processes to ensure global business alignment across both its business strategy and technology processes. Boden required an assessment of alternative solutions capable of providing more efficient and automated processes for product development and analysis, such as insight into buying patterns, to further support the future growth of the business and product diversity into the marketplace.

Matthew Dalton, Director of IT, Boden, said, “As a company we’ve seen huge organic growth and product expansion in all markets over the past few years. As a retail clothing business we are focused on product. We pride ourselves on attention to detail and high quality products, and from a business point of view, wanted to identify what we could be doing in terms of efficiency and IT process improvements, all of which filter through to all aspects of the lifecycle of our products. We have our own in-house product master file database, but are mainly governed by manual processes. The ability to free up resources and automate specific processes would provide us with a platform to support the business both today and in the future.”

Hitachi Consulting UK led a number of stakeholder interviews and workshops, and a consensus of current issues and technical objectives were agreed. Hitachi Consulting UK facilitated a review of three product lifecycle management (PLM) solutions which address the future PLM scope, helping to bring to life the modern systemic capabilities, and enabling the Boden team to understand how these capabilities could support strategic direction. Following this review, the scope of PLM was extended to include merchandise and assortment planning.

“Hitachi Consulting UK has helped us cut through the potential misconceptions of the technology and understand how specific solutions could work for us on a pragmatic level, without a lot of consultancy waffle,” commented Matthew Dalton. “PLM will enable us to improve efficiency, and also lend itself to the design, buying and merchandising teams, for example. Hitachi Consulting UK has helped us to identify best practice methodologies but also help cut through the hype and pinpoint what could work for us in terms of improvements verses what we wouldn’t change and what currently works. We were impressed with Hitachi Consulting’s UK Consulting team and their deep understanding of the retail sector. We will be looking at PLM implementation into 2012.”

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