Do More with Less: How to Grow Your Apparel Business without Growing Overhead

As companies expand, they must figure out how to streamline production to meet increased demands. How can you grow your apparel business without growing overhead?

Where are businesses heading in terms of growth?

Did you know that 48% of U.S. companies plan to expand internationally in 2015-2016?i Growth is an exciting time for any business, though it comes with a certain set of challenges related to production, increased costs, time management and visibility. If your business is currently expanding, or planning to in the future, there are a few questions to consider:

• How will I meet increased demand for my product or service?
• How can I both sell more and improve margins on my products?
• How will I streamline production for faster delivery to market?
   

These are key questions to ask for successful growth, and the answer is simple: automation. In today’s technological environment, businesses leveraging an Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) solutions can adopt automation techniques that will spur growth without the need for additional hires. Find out how to grow your business without growing overhead.

How can automation encourage growth without inducing high costs?

In a recent Apparel/Gartner report, apparel businesses identified cost reduction as the most important business initiative got 2016.ⁱⁱ Research shows that the majority of expanding businesses aim to grow without incurring the costs associated with new hires and changes in the production cycle.

Although expansion will likely require some form of budget increase, using automation can help limit these costs and save your business money. How? By automating repetitive and tedious tasks, professionals, consultants and IT departments have more time to focus on critical activities.ⁱⁱⁱ Using a tool that can utilize big data to test change impact solutions is another great method for seeing where costs can be cut. Businesses now have the ability to locate potential bugs, errors and hurdles in ERP upgrades, patches and changes, and address them before confirming any changes. With recent advances in automation capabilities, ERP systems can be updated or changed almost effortlessly.^iv

Implementing automation to your business lifecycle helps you stay competitive while growing by reducing production costs, reducing waste and keeping employee counts stable.

How can my business approach automation?

The best way to approach automation is to examine your business’ current ERP solution and pinpoint any target areas in need of improvement or streamlining.

A key component of successful automation is actionable intelligence, which is essentially the next generation of business intelligence. Professionals cannot simply analyze your business’s data to determine potential areas of growth; they must provide proactive insight into this data to make smart decisions about where resources should be placed and where processes are lacking in efficiency. Actionable intelligence should be integrated into your applications, modules and automation processes. Smart, data-driven analytics can contribute to cost reduction, making your business more proactive in the marketplace; gain the ability to sell more by better understanding your audience and how your products are selling. Business changes should always be derived from informed data analysis.

Automation is the Future of Growth

To sum up, automation helps businesses grow streamlining the entire business process from design to delivery. With actionable insight fueling automation efforts, what would have normally taken more people to produce more output has changed. Grow your business without growing overhead with automation by increasing visibility, reducing waste, minimizing the cost of goods and allowing your most skilled personnel to stop working on repetitive tasks to focus on core competencies.

Your ERP solution can use automation, paired with actionable intelligence to do more with less overhead: more proactivity, higher levels of production and reduced time to market.

[i] Taking the Fear Out of International Expansion for U.S. Companies, IDC Report, 2015

[ii] Top Technology Trends in the Apparel Market, Apparel/Gartner Report, 2016

[iii] http://consulting.co.uk/big-data-automation-self-service-key-trends-in-the-erp-consulting-business/

[iv] http://financesonline.com/the-future-of-erp-solutions-the-next-big-thing-is-automation-acceleration/