Infor, the industry cloud company, today announced that Serge Blanco has chosen Infor CloudSuite Fashion, an ERP solution specifically designed for the fashion, textile and luxury industries, as part of a project to overhaul its information system and implement a true omnichannel customer journey.
With 160 employees — half of whom work in boutiques — the Serge Blanco brand, which belongs to the family group LBY from Toulouse, has been dressing men for 30 years. The brand offers a complete wardrobe for men who break the lines and codes of fashion to create their own style. It is inevitably unique. Serge Blanco defends comfort to allow everyone to feel good, comfortable and free to move forward, to move, to launch themselves. With its experience and original values, in 2020 the brand became the official dresser of the biggest French rugby team, the Stade Toulousain, signing a collaboration with an exclusive collection.
Patrick Silvestri, information systems manager at Serge Blanco, says: “Initiated in November 2020, our project with Infor was triggered by business considerations that we were unable to address due to the obsolescence of our existing system and the increasing complexity of our distribution network.”
Other projects are being carried out in parallel by the company, such as the overhaul of its e-commerce site which, like other applications, will be interconnected with the Infor solution for end-to-end orchestration of the supply chain: from order taking through allocation of goods, management of restocking and stocks (including in shops), right up to the warehouse.
Serge Blanco, which offers two collections per year for its various lines, has a network of around 30 own-name shops, including four outlets, throughout France. In addition, the brand relies on a network of franchises, affiliates, 250 multi-brand shops, as well as numerous corners in shopping centres and department stores throughout the world.
Aware of the road ahead in terms of modernising its management system, Serge Blanco chose Infor CloudSuite Fashion in June 2021, a modern, scalable ERP solution with a wealth of functions that, according to the specifications, did not require any specific development for a very good benefit/cost ratio.
“The decision was made in a concerted manner following a series of internal workshops organised by Elcimaï, Infor's integrator partner, and involving the various departments concerned: production and purchasing, sales administration and after-sales service, commercial management, retail sales, logistics, accounting/finance and, of course, IT,” Silvestri says. “In addition to the fact that the solution covers more than 90% of our needs as standard, the fact that we can rely on a fully integrated solution with a single repository is one of the main reasons for our choice.”
Bruno Kientzel, managing director of Elcimaï Business Solutions, comments: “Alongside those of Infor, our teams were able to convince the company's management of their ability to support the project as closely as possible to its business challenges and issues. The choice of the cloud, including in terms of e-commerce, was then made naturally for obvious reasons of nonreplication and data centralisation.”
Since last July, a dozen users have been working on redefining the processes, while it is now time for the final validation of the requirements and the redesign of the various interfaces with a view to a deployment planned for the third quarter of 2022.
Infor's solution will be connected to five other applications, including expense management, payroll management, the e-commerce site, the multi-brand B2B distance selling platform “The New Black” to which the brand belongs, the WSHOP unified digital commerce SaaS platform, and the cash register management software solution from Polaris.
Philippe Maillet, Infor's sales director for France for SMB & channel, said: “Infor CloudSuite Fashion enables fashion brands to manage all aspects of their business in one integrated, configurable and scalable solution, while easily interfacing with third-party applications. In addition, its multilingual capabilities should provide Serge Blanco with the right solution to support its international expansion, particularly in the US and Belgium, where the company already has a subsidiary.”
Silvestri concludes: “In view of the professionalism of the Infor and Elcimaï teams, as well as the initial feedback we have received, we are confident this project will go well. As our businesses continue to evolve, we can now approach the evolution of the relationship with all our customers with much greater serenity.”
