Centric Software®, the Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) market leader, proudly announces that Montane, a high-performance outdoor apparel and equipment brand based in the UK, has successfully implemented Centric PLM™. Centric Software provides the most innovative enterprise solutions to plan, design, develop, source, buy, make, price, allocate, sell and replenish products such as fashion, outdoor, luxury, multi-category retail, grocery, food & beverage, cosmetics & personal care and consumer electronics to achieve strategic and operational digital transformation goals.
Montane has a rich history of innovation and for three decades has created the most innovative, lightweight and breathable ‘bleeding edge’ high performance apparel in the world. It boasts an expansive range of products for both men and women and reaches its global customer base through its e-commerce site and an outlet store in the UK. On the quest to go ‘Further. Faster.’ it has an aggressive international growth strategy, recently opening up to the US, Nordic, Japanese and European markets, and has a second outlet store set to open its doors in 2024.
“We are confident in our international growth targets, but in order to succeed, we needed more efficient processes in place,” says Marc Davis, Product Line Manager at Montane. “Within the outdoor industry, we are trying to achieve an elevated position and focus on the light, high performance product that has led to planned growth.”
Montane’s journey to adopt a PLM system began in 2022. The power to streamline product development processes, do away with ‘dozens of spreadsheets’ and maximize efficiencies across the company were top priorities. Montane selected Centric Software’s cloud-based PLM solution for small and mid-sized businesses, Centric SMB, and went live with the system in December 2023.
“A PLM system makes data more accurate; it makes workflows more consistent, and it generally makes the whole business run better,” says Davis. “Some of our team had previous experience working with Centric, so we were familiar with its powerful capabilities, and we knew we could trust it to transform our operations.”
Montane’s implementation was a major undertaking as the team manually input all their highly detailed, technical product data to ensure it was accurate from the start. Despite this, the process has been largely plain sailing with teams embracing the system as a positive change.
“Of course, adapting to a new system has its initial challenges,” explains Davis. “But the more people have used Centric, the more they genuinely enjoy it and see its inherent value.”
Today, the product development and operations teams are using PLM, with logistics and costing slated to come online in phase two.
“We are in the middle of our first live season with PLM and slowly, but surely, transitioning out of all of the old systems,” shares Davis. “The number of spreadsheets that are now discontinued because of Centric is vast, and we are definitely becoming very efficient at quite a quick speed.”
Davis emphasizes the value of the training sessions and responsive support provided by the Centric Software team, and the ability for Montane to be adaptable as the keys to a successful implementation.
“I think businesses implementing a PLM system need to be open-minded to change and know that the business needs to adapt to the system, as much as the system needs to adapt to the business,” says Davis. “Centric PLM is so intuitive and once you understand the solution, the simplicity of it comes out, and it makes life so much easier.”
“We are thrilled that Montane has successfully launched Centric PLM and streamlined their product development processes,” says Chris Groves, CEO of Centric Software. “We look forward to our long-term partnership and to Montane’s continued success as they expand the solution.”
