Building on its strategy to develop innovations that drive retail transformation for brands, retailers and manufacturers, Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) leader Centric Software has announced new additions to the Centric Visual Innovation Platform (Centric VIP). Developed in partnership with world-leading brands and retailers, Digital Concept Boards and Digital Buying Boards re-define design ideation and buying by fully transforming the ways teams collaborate, share ideas and make decisions.
Centric VIP is a visual, fully digital collection of collaborative boards for touch-based devices such as iPad, iPhone and touch-screen televisions and are fully connected with Centric PLM. Centric VIP boards transform the product strategy, ideation and go-to-market process, resulting in highly accelerated creative iteration and execution for individuals and teams, including C-levels. Centric VIP’s highly visual and beautiful interface, brings together live information from multiple sources across the entire organization. These boards align teams and leverage internal knowledge for quick execution as well as dramatically accelerated time to market and product innovation.
Centric VIP’s new Digital Concept Board combines creative, technical and business expertise to accelerate product development. Teams across all departments including design, merchandising and production/sourcing are able to use the Digital Concept Board as a digital sandbox for creative-play and what-iffing within a business context. Today this work typically takes place offline or with ad-hoc tools.
Used collaboratively on touch-based devices or via a web browser, teams can freely drag and drop inspiration images from sources like mood boards, websites and existing PLM product libraries to digitally capture creative concepts, elaborate design intent and create product briefs. Merchandising and production/sourcing teams contribute additional knowledge and, as concepts mature, they are quickly pushed to PLM for further development, samples, sourcing and market launch.
All information is digital resulting in full visibility into collection status, zero data loss/re-entry or error and a massive boost in execution speed. Analog tools such as foam core boards, paper printouts and sticky notes are eliminated thus driving efficiencies at many levels while creativity and product innovation are elevated.
Buyers choose products from global, core or special collections and build assortments by channel (retailer and/or e-commerce), store type or even by individual store, with roll-ups of buy commitments for multiple channels and other analytics calculated automatically. Roll-ups are used to forecast aggregate quantities for production planning and minimum order quantity (MOQ) checks; analytics validate buying choices by giving insights such as quantities by color, material, style, price point, delivery date, region, channel, etc.
Linking product, merchandising, buying and sales teams for real-time collaboration when holding buying sessions and creating regional assortments dramatically streamlines communications, empowers regional decision-makers with up-to-date, transparent information and gives product teams visibility into what is being brought to market. Execution time is vastly accelerated.
“Digital Concept Boards and Digital Buying Boards are market-driven innovations developed in partnership with our customers,” says Chris Groves, President and CEO of Centric Software. “Both boards drive digital transformation by allowing designers, merchandisers and buyers to truly collaborate, fundamentally changing the way decisions are made. The end result is a massive boost in the speed of innovation to market.”
Centric Software will unveil its game-changing Digital Concept and Digital Buying Boards at the National Retail Federation’s annual conference, NRF 2019: Retail’s Big Show, which takes place on January 13-15 in the Javits Center, NYC.
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