If time flies, then clocks in the fashion industry must be set on turbo-charge. Just ask Barry Marshall, financial director of Dune, the premium ladies and mens fashion footwear and accessories specialist.
“We’re in a climate of constantly shifting trends and highly volatile consumer demand” explains Barry. “For example, our year used to be made up of two seasons – Spring/Summer and Autumn/Winter but now we're working to four separate seasons”. This means a supply of fresh ideas must be brought to market in double-quick time.
Fortunately, constant creativity is the defining characteristic for Dune, which is famous for putting originality and passion into shoes. However, creativity has to be backed up by an efficient supply chain with rapid supply and replenishment and that in turn needs the support of high quality IT systems.
“We knew early on that we needed an integrated IT solution - without it we couldn't keep pace with market demands and we needed to concentrate on building a global fashion lifestyle brand, without being held back by inadequate IT systems. With twenty stores and a further eleven concession outlets, the two existing systems (in-house IT for wholesale and external IT for retail), were not providing us with the information or the integration we needed to grow the business” explains Barry. Clearly it’s vital that a company such as Dune, which together with its wholesale parent company Browning Enterprises, has a turnover of £60million, can keep track of its business. “We were in a position where we just couldn’t tell accurately what our stock losses were or identify individual lines within branches” continues Barry “and we were spending far too much time and resource inputting data manually, making rapid turnaround a nightmare".
In early 1999, Dune began its search for a new IT supplier – one which could handle the continued rapid growth of the company and provide a seamless solution for all parts of the business. Four potential suppliers were assessed with two then shortlisted.
Managing Director of both Dune and Browning Enterprises, Daniel Rubin, explains “Prologic won our confidence with their unrivalled fashion industry focus and experience, impressive customer portfolio and the essential flexibility and scaleability of its product, CIMS. The company also came highly recommended by Jeffrey Rogers which provided us with that all-important third party endorsement”.
But it was when the full capability of CIMS was demonstrated, that the deal was finally clinched. “Prologic really shone when we saw how they could deal with our replenishment requirements, getting stock to stores and shoes to customers – fast” recalls Daniel. “Not to mention the ability of the system, which is based on Oracle’s robust database, to grow as we grow, something that just wasn’t possible with our old IT systems”. It was soon decided to also implement CIMS across the wholesale business, Browning Enterprises, one of the UK’s leading fashion shoe designers and importers. “We now have full integrated control of every key element of our business” concludes Daniel.
Dune and Browning use CIMS for product sourcing, warehousing and stock control, financial ledgers, price list management, allocation and replenishment, retail outlet management, order processing, production and purchase planning, distribution and invoicing. All of which links with point of sale to provide comprehensive and accurate management information across the entire company.
Prologic doesn’t just deliver software, it provides an extensive management consultancy service to ensure that its clients needs are properly understood and met. Barry Marshall knows how important it is to get this right “we’ve got a team of 80 people who access the system, so it’s been vital that we’ve had ongoing consultancy and training from Prologic” he says “this constant support means as we integrate CIMS into our business, our knowledge is improving and our systems are becoming tighter all the time”.
Dune continues to evolve its IT strategy by upgrading their current EPoS units and installing Vision for CIMS (a business intelligence and data warehousing tool), which will provide extra reporting power, giving even greater business control and visibility. “We have so much more information at our finger tips than ever before. I’m particularly looking forward to using Vision which will allow us to build management reports to exactly our own specification helping us to make more timely mission critical business decisions” comments Barry.
“Using CIMS is like being given an extra pair of eyes, as Financial Director, I can keep a careful watch on what’s gone before, whilst keeping a look out for what lies ahead” concludes Barry. And in an industry where time is in short supply – that’s got to be good news.