Retailers must keep a close eye on product life-cycle management if they are to maintain their brand image and appear as customer centric and efficient, according to a report from IDC.
The IDC Retail Insights report reveals, the analyst house claims, companies should engage in a broad spectrum of product lifecycle management – from the conception of the product through to receipt – if they wish to improve their performance. In retail, carefully scrutiny on product lifecycles can allow companies to achieve more profitable product launches, and, crucially, fewer product failures.
Rather than its original use as just improving technical specification, product lifecycle management, IDC claims, can increase innovation and product cycle times while taking regulatory compliance and ways to cut costs into account.
Product lifecycle management, IDC claims, can actually empower employees to do as they do best, depending on what they excel at. For example, research director at IDC Retail Leslie Hand points out, designers can design, supply chain managers can optimise their networks, and merchants can efficiently buy and sell.
“By enabling collaboration up and down the supply chain,” Hand said, “retailers can not only reduce the cost of doing business, but improve performance for all supply chain partners.”
“Importantly, with retail PLM the retailer can develop fashion products closer to customer demand, enabling fresh and inviting assortments, that improve customer loyalty and sales,” Hand said.
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