Reinsurance risk mitigation using digital risk management solutions

Reinsurers face a high level of risk from multiple market forces, including claims leakage, the arrival of new players, poor management of aging recoverables, and inadequate business intelligence capabilities. Implementing the right digital solution is absolutely crucial for minimizing these risks.

What good risk management solutions offer

The “right” solution is one that addresses all of your organization’s risk management needs without requiring extensive customization. The customization process delays time to value, increases implementation costs, reduces adoption rates, and increases the chance of unexpected results. Your digital risk management solution should include out-of-the-box capabilities like claims and event management, policy management, technical accounting, statistical and regulatory reports, and advanced business intelligence.

Ensuring successful solution implementation

Successfully implementing a risk management system isn’t easy. In addition to ensuring that the solution possesses all the functionality your organization needs, you must also integrate it with your other existing information systems and configure it to align properly with company-specific internal policies and workflows.

The implementation project’s success hinges on open and efficient communication between your solution implementation partner and internal project team. Delays in the decision making and approval process on either end can cause the project to go over budget or create gaps in your expectations and actual solution functionality.

Avoiding claims leakage

Digital risk management systems can help reduce claims leakage using self-auditing capabilities, improved monitoring claims personnel, robust claim data modelling capabilities, and integrated, automated claims workflows that minimize manual intervention.

Enhancing operational processes

Automating internal business processes and integration with external systems are important ways to improve efficiency and minimize errors. Automated processes are also easier to audit and analyze, providing better visibility and accountability.

It is critical to adopt modern technology to achieve operational efficiency and mitigate risk. Digital technology also helps reinsurers control costs across the whole reinsurance value chain while also improving business relationships. Choose a dependable technology vendor who has experience in handling reinsurance projects and a solid implementation track record. Please contact Visionet Systems today for a complimentary solution demo.

5 ways of achieving flawless EDI integration with Microsoft Dynamics 365

EDI is the most widely used structured electronic data exchange between organizations. However, not all EDI solutions are created equal. Instead of operating as stand-alone applications that require manual entry and their own maintenance regime, leading EDI platforms integrate seamlessly with ERP software and other business applications to eliminate manual rekeying and duplication of business information.

Microsoft Dynamics 365 is a powerful cloud-based ERP solution. A fully integrated EDI solution can extend this power by directly connecting your implementation of Dynamics 365 to your trading partners’ ERP systems. Decision makers need to choose an EDI solution that integrates rapidly with Dynamics 365 and takes full advantage of Dynamics 365’s analytics, workflows, and other productivity-enhancing capabilities.

In this blog post, we’ll consider several factors that are important for effectively integrating your EDI solution with Dynamics 365:

The advantage of native integration

Some EDI solutions are designed to natively integrate with Dynamics 365. If you choose the correct one of these solutions, you don’t have to worry about compatibility or security issues – everything just works. This is the best way to avoid compromises or complications during or after solution implementation.

Choose a reliable integration partner and platform

If you decide to implement an EDI solution that isn’t specifically designed to integrate with Dynamics 365, choose an integration partner that possesses in-depth experience with integrating EDI solutions with Microsoft platforms. Since Dynamics 365 runs on the Microsoft Azure cloud platform, your partner of choice should be familiar with Azure-compatible enterprise application integration (EAI) tools and methodologies. To minimize business risk and avoid future upgrade costs, the integration platform should be highly secure and scalable.

Onboarding new EDI trading partners

In addition to the many security and regulatory concerns associated with transmitting sensitive data between organizations, each business that you partner with usually has its own set of information policies and standards. While integrating your EDI solution with Dynamics 365, make sure that the integration provides enough flexibility to accommodate these partner requirements.

Eliminate manual processes

The ROI of automating EDI processes varies depending on the frequency and importance of your data exchanges with other organizations. If you send or receive just a few documents each month, a fully automatic solution might not deliver enough value to justify the cost of implementation.

While integrating your EDI platform with Dynamics 365 will automate many manual processes, some ancillary processes might continue to be performed manually. Before you go the extra mile and attempt to eliminate these additional steps, define your specific EDI integration goals and determine the value you expect from automating each manual process. This will give you a clear picture of what you stand to gain from end-to-end automation of supply chain communication.

Data accessibility and privacy

If there are regulations or internal policies that prevent you from storing some types of business information in the public cloud, you will have to take this into consideration while planning to integrate your EDI solution with Dynamics 365. Instead of simply using Dynamics 365 or Azure cloud storage, you might have to implement a hybrid solution. These requirements add cost and complexity, so you should be aware of them before you begin integration.

Conclusion

Organizations that prepare a complete roadmap of the EDI integration process are rewarded with faster time to value, lower implementation costs, fewer delays, and higher ROI. For more information on best practices for integrating EDI with Dynamics 365, contact PartnerLink for a complimentary consultation.

Improving your eCommerce experience with an EDI solution

eCommerce is on the rise. Buyers want access to everything from the comfort of their laptop or phone, and customer journeys that span multiple channels have become the new norm. Because of these and other complexities, success in digital commerce depends heavily on a smoothly functioning supply chain.
Successful online retailers are adopting electronic data interchange (EDI) solutions so they can efficiently exchange purchase orders, delivery notes, invoices, and other documents with manufacturers and suppliers in their global supply chain using a single digital platform. EDI systems can enhance your eCommerce experience in several different ways:

Fewer stockouts

Few things annoy your shoppers more than their desired product being out of stock. Even if your suppliers are completely reliable, you might forget to place replenishment orders in time.
Modern EDI solutions that integrate with your ERP and WMS software let you simplify or even automate your replenishment cycle by either notifying you or immediately placing orders with your suppliers whenever stock levels fall below a specified threshold. As a result, your customers are far less likely to experience stockouts, which helps you maintain high customer satisfaction.

Fewer order fulfillment errors

Incorrectly keyed information can lead to your customers receiving the wrong product. They might be shipped the correct product in the wrong quantity, or if you’ve made a mistake in their delivery information, they won’t receive their order at all! Any of these errors will almost certainly lead to very irate customers and maybe even negative publicity.
EDI minimizes manual entry. You (and your supplier) won’t have to decipher someone’s messy handwriting, hunt down an email that contains order information, or risk making a mistake while rekeying an order from one program into another. More accurate order information reduces the risk of fulfillment delays, angry customers, and loss of business.

Personalization and direct shipping

More and more businesses are harnessing digital supply chain technology and consumer analytics to offer their customers made-to-order products. With real-time vendor communication solutions, retailers can keep their supply chain agile and minimize logistics and inventory costs by sending customized product orders to manufacturers so they can produce and send items directly to your customers.
You don’t need to offer product personalization services to take advantage of EDI in this way. Even if your products are mass-produced, the ability to instantly send delivery information to suppliers is a great way to drastically shorten order fulfillment times, minimize warehousing and inventory spend, and keep your customers happy.

Real-time special order availability

Some online retailers allow their customers to place special orders for items they don’t usually keep in inventory. However, most of these retailers don’t have an up-to-the-minute record of their suppliers’ stock levels or delivery times, which means their online store doesn’t tell their customers how soon they’ll receive these items. More often than not, customers decide to look elsewhere for the item they wanted, and the retailer misses out on a sale.
EDI integration can give your customers real-time information about special order availability and wait times. Even if you don’t keep a particular item in stock, your online store can use EDI to instantly consult your supplier’s records, determine the item’s estimated delivery time, and place an order.

Conclusion

Your customers value timely replenishment, quick and accurate fulfillment, and end-to-end visibility, and digital technologies like EDI that allow you to effortlessly deliver this value represent a real competitive advantage. To learn more about how digital B2B communication drives growth and reduces customer churn, please register for our December 13 webinar, “Live Demo of PartnerLink for Dynamics 3665 FO in Retail”.

Creating a consumer-centric value chain through digital transformation

Within businesses, supply chain professionals are under constant pressure to improve efficiency. Competition continues to increase and customer expectations are at an all-time high. Previously, manufacturers focused on their product and its features, not on whether it was in sync with the needs of the consumer. With the rise of digital analytics, however, the consumer has taken the reins, changing the ballgame for companies that now have to change their product strategies so they’re more about us, the consumer, than them, the producer.

But how do they achieve this?

Craft a strategy for the digital age

In this customer-led world, a successful customer strategy is key – one that uses sophisticated data analytics tools, massive amounts of rich customer data, and an agile, test-and-learn technique for developing valuable new product proposals. Businesses need to partner with their customers to co-create products and services that align with those customers’ needs.

Creating a winning customer strategy can be nerve-wracking when digital disruption has you worried about how to stay relevant to your customers, stay ahead of the competition, and stay profitable in highly volatile markets. These concerns can be assuaged by customer journey mapping and user experience design, which are crucial for implementing customer-centric changes. These activities should be strengthened by training, technology, innovation, and design thinking, which help businesses adopt cross-functional, customer-centric operating models and enjoy the economic and reputational rewards of an enhanced customer experience.

Improve your customer experience

Investing in customer experience enhancement can produce a substantial competitive advantage. Leading consumer brands achieve twice as much revenue growth as their competitors by designing a better customer experience that inspires brand loyalty.

Building an effective customer experience through calculated vision and design will pave the way for a successful transformation. This can be achieved through:

• Customer experience analytics that bring the voice of the customer into the boardroom, providing perspective and enabling leaders to assess returns. Collecting customer feedback using surveys and focus groups helps you accomplish this by providing a more unified understanding of customer preferences and observed behavior. You will be able to forecast customer trends with greater accuracy and devise more effective sales, marketing, and customer service processes.
• Embracing design thinking to craft engaging customer experiences. Add the concept of customer-led “service design” to your product design process – a complete framework that enables you to see how clients and prospects connect with your brand and product, and shows all the various stages customers experience as they interact with your online channels, from awareness to consideration to purchase.

Digitally integrate your marketing, sales, and service

Traditional companies need to transform marketing, sales, and service silos into an integrated process for attracting, acquiring, and engaging customers – all seamlessly connected to agile supply chain operations.

• Transform marketing: Recognize your customers' needs and form marketing strategies according to those needs. Sophisticated analytics and intelligent use of customer data will align your marketing efforts with fact-based insights.
• Transform sales: Offline sales channels need to be transformed, digitized, and then fully integrated with your purely digital channels. Your sales operations need to move away from the product-centric approach towards consumer-centric.
• Omni-channel integration: Multi-channel customer contact for each transaction is now the norm. Customers favor mobile channels now, so your business should have a mobile channel strategy that offers a more personalized experience.

Conclusion

By implementing customer-centricity with a focus on the economics of the customer experience, you can drive profitable growth, create actionable insights and strategies for customer focus, and operationalize them. Use digital technology to create strong market intelligence and opportunities for personalized consumer interactions.

Digital BI and analytics powered by machine learning can go a long way towards realizing your consumer-centric approach to product development, and can be leveraged into strategic decisions that improve business performance, profitability, and customer relationships. To learn more, please contact Visionet Systems.

Top new features in Dynamics 365 for Finance and Operations

Microsoft has added many new features to Dynamics 365 for Finance and Operations that will enable you to transform your business faster.

Real-time intelligence and insights into business data will help you proactively manage and grow your business globally. The common data service (CDS) integrates customer engagement applications across the Dynamics 365 portfolio of products, the built-in back-end Finance and Operations module, and core functionality like finance, retail, manufacturing enhancement, and extensible global support.

1. Productivity and Usability

Usability enhancements will enable business users to view, filter, and save optimized views of data, improving productivity on daily tasks. Other enhancements will improve end-user performance for on-hand inventory reporting, master planning, consolidation of planned orders, and warehouse operations. Customers will also be able perform unassisted upgrades using upgrade automation.

2. Personalization

Personalization improvements will enable users to remove columns from grids, add fields, and track additional information in the system by creating custom fields to tailor the application to fit their business. Business users will be able to create, save, and share multiple optimized views that can be targeted for certain user groups or business tasks. Saved views will greatly simplify the user experience and improve user productivity.

With WYSIWYG capabilities, you will have a better user experience and will no longer have to repeatedly exit and then re-enter personalization mode to make all the desired form modifications.

3. Intelligence and Insights

Microsoft continues to improve extended analytical workspaces, and soon you will be able to personalize dashboards by combining data from Finance and Operations and other systems with rich visualizations.

With “bring your own database” (BYOD) functionality, users can create, save, and share multiple optimized views that can be targeted for user groups or business tasks. It also enables customization of analytical workspaces.

Companies prefer seeing their data in real time to enable faster decision making instead of relying on overnight scheduled refreshes. Real-time Power BI visibility lets you pin Power BI dashboards with real-time data to Microsoft Dynamics 365 for Finance and Operations. Some data, like from a Salesforce or Market content pack, is automatically refreshed for you. If you use a live connection or DirectQuery, the data will be updated automatically.

4. Connected Ecosystem

Microsoft has created an ecosystem of products that are seamlessly integrated with Dynamics 365 for Finance and Operations. With the Data Management workspace, you will be able to configure multiple data sources. With CDS, you will have more than 200 out-of-the-box data sources that use advanced EDI capabilities to integrate with practically anything.

The Talent Management app leverages the capabilities of Office 365, Skype, and LinkedIn to attract talent. Azure Machine Learning identifies qualified candidates by comparing their profiles to your job requirements. Skype Interviews makes interviews more collaborative by adding a shared whiteboard and coding environment for real-time technical exercises. Features like onboarding support, benefits, workforce, and organizational management capabilities make Talent a complete “hire-to-fire” module.

Deeper integration provides a more seamless transition between the Talent app and Dynamics 365 for Finance and Operations.

The Field Services module has become more proactive. It engages customers, optimizes resources, and uses a more interactive and adaptable platform. It uses the IoT to proactively detect and create alerts and orders, with the deep Finance and Operations integration and work order data to be pushed to sales. It offers warehouse and purchase orders, invoice integration, and also enables account, product, and pricelist master data integration.

Project Service includes adjustments to approved time, expense, and journal lines, support for multiple time units on a single price list, and configuring a unit of time for estimating work on project tasks.

5. Global Capabilities

Microsoft’s core capabilities keep improving and its enhanced features enable businesses to meet their requirements effectively.

Enterprise credit management capabilities automate credit management processes for accounting and finance professionals to proactively suggest credit control activities that improve cash flow, reduce bad debts, and provide new account control management.

With dual currency, the reporting currency becomes a secondary currency and tracks the reporting currency in fixed assets, Accounts Receivable, Accounts Payable, and bank management.

Finance and accounting professionals use revenue recognition capabilities to automate compliance with IFRS and ASC 606 financial reporting standards.

6. Regulatory and Electronic Reporting

Every country has their own taxes and regulations. ERP systems must meet these local requirements, so Microsoft keeps adding localization features into Dynamics 365 for Finance and Operations.

Regulatory Services will provide functionality that can be integrated with any business application. This service allows developers building applications to focus on their core functionality rather than worrying about meeting the increasing number of legal requirements around the globe. Enhanced configurability features let partners and customers create extensions and customizations without coding. For example, they can configure the tax currency in tax documents to help customers with multiple branches in different countries.

In accordance with the legal requirements of various countries and regions, Dynamics 365 for Finance and Operations supports formats for both incoming and outgoing electronic documents. Because you configure formats instead of code, creating electronic documents is faster and easier. Forms like Vendor Check, Customer Sales Invoice, and Customer Purchase Order can be configured without involving a developer.

The update also adds new features like automatic comparison of electronic reporting format executions with baselines for automatic test capabilities. Relative paths in electronic reporting formulas allow quick remapping of the format if you need to switch to another data entity or XML node with a similar structure.

7. Optimization Advisor

Incorrectly configuring a module can adversely affect system performance and business operations. The correctness, completeness, and cleanliness of your business data also affects system performance, your organization's decision-making capabilities, and employee productivity.

The Optimization Advisor workspace is a tool that lets power users, business analysts, functional consultants, and IT support functions identify issues in module configuration and business data. Optimization Advisor suggests best practices for module configuration and identifies business data that is obsolete or incorrect.

Optimization Advisor periodically runs a set of best practice rules. When a violation is detected, an optimization opportunity is generated and appears in the Optimization Advisor workspace. A user can take corrective action directly from the Optimization Advisor workspace.

8. Distributed Order Management

Distributed Order Management (DOM) lets retailers take advantage of intelligent algorithms to optimize order fulfillment operations across their enterprise. DOM automatically determines the best possible fulfillment location across warehouses, distribution centers, or even stores based on user-definable profiles containing rules, scope, and delivery methods. Enhanced order fulfillment capabilities within Retail Modern POS and Cloud POS help turn each retail location into a micro-warehouse, ensuring that orders are filled as efficiently and cost-effectively as possible.

9. Vendor Collaboration

The Vendor Collaboration module is targeted at vendors who don't have electronic data interchange (EDI) integration with Microsoft Dynamics 365 for Finance and Operations. It lets vendors work with purchase orders (POs), invoices, consignment inventory information, and requests for quotation (RFQs), and also lets them access parts of their vendor master data. Notable features of this module include:

• Working with RFQs
• Vendor management, security, and compliance settings
• Working with POs (sending, confirming, changing, cancelling)
• PO status and version information
• Consignment inventory

10. Catch Weight Product Processing

This functionality will provide support for using catch weight products as part of warehouse management processes. Catch weight products are often used in industries like the food industry where products can vary slightly by weight, size, or both. Catch weight products use two units of measure — an inventory unit (kilograms) and a catch weight unit (boxes).

Within warehouse management processes, catch weight products can be handled in different units like pallets and boxes. For example, business processes can be granularly defined to perform inbound weighing on a per-pallet level and capture the outbound sales process during picking or packing according to catch weight quantity (boxes).

Conclusion

The features mentioned in this post aren’t all that Microsoft offers. Microsoft’s roadmap for new releases includes many other features designed to meet the growing demands of business users, and they will continue to expand their products’ integration capabilities to support these users’ diverse needs and specialized niches.

This article is a part of our Dynamics 365 blog series that keeps companies updated about the latest developments in the world of tech. For further information on Dynamics 365 for Finance and Operations, please contact Visionet Systems today.

Reference: https://www.visionetsystems.com/blog/top-new-features-dynamics-365-finance-and-operations

Top new features in Dynamics 365 for Finance and Operations

Microsoft has added many new features to Dynamics 365 for Finance and Operations that will enable you to transform your business faster.

Real-time intelligence and insights into business data will help you proactively manage and grow your business globally. The common data service (CDS) integrates customer engagement applications across the Dynamics 365 portfolio of products, the built-in back-end Finance and Operations module, and core functionality like finance, retail, manufacturing enhancement, and extensible global support.

1. Productivity and Usability

Usability enhancements will enable business users to view, filter, and save optimized views of data, improving productivity on daily tasks. Other enhancements will improve end-user performance for on-hand inventory reporting, master planning, consolidation of planned orders, and warehouse operations. Customers will also be able perform unassisted upgrades using upgrade automation.

2. Personalization

Personalization improvements will enable users to remove columns from grids, add fields, and track additional information in the system by creating custom fields to tailor the application to fit their business. Business users will be able to create, save, and share multiple optimized views that can be targeted for certain user groups or business tasks. Saved views will greatly simplify the user experience and improve user productivity.

With WYSIWYG capabilities, you will have a better user experience and will no longer have to repeatedly exit and then re-enter personalization mode to make all the desired form modifications.

3. Intelligence and Insights

Microsoft continues to improve extended analytical workspaces, and soon you will be able to personalize dashboards by combining data from Finance and Operations and other systems with rich visualizations.

With “bring your own database” (BYOD) functionality, users can create, save, and share multiple optimized views that can be targeted for user groups or business tasks. It also enables customization of analytical workspaces.

Companies prefer seeing their data in real time to enable faster decision making instead of relying on overnight scheduled refreshes. Real-time Power BI visibility lets you pin Power BI dashboards with real-time data to Microsoft Dynamics 365 for Finance and Operations. Some data, like from a Salesforce or Market content pack, is automatically refreshed for you. If you use a live connection or DirectQuery, the data will be updated automatically.

4. Connected Ecosystem

Microsoft has created an ecosystem of products that are seamlessly integrated with Dynamics 365 for Finance and Operations. With the Data Management workspace, you will be able to configure multiple data sources. With CDS, you will have more than 200 out-of-the-box data sources that use advanced EDI capabilities to integrate with practically anything.

The Talent Management app leverages the capabilities of Office 365, Skype, and LinkedIn to attract talent. Azure Machine Learning identifies qualified candidates by comparing their profiles to your job requirements. Skype Interviews makes interviews more collaborative by adding a shared whiteboard and coding environment for real-time technical exercises. Features like onboarding support, benefits, workforce, and organizational management capabilities make Talent a complete “hire-to-fire” module.

Deeper integration provides a more seamless transition between the Talent app and Dynamics 365 for Finance and Operations.

The Field Services module has become more proactive. It engages customers, optimizes resources, and uses a more interactive and adaptable platform. It uses the IoT to proactively detect and create alerts and orders, with the deep Finance and Operations integration and work order data to be pushed to sales. It offers warehouse and purchase orders, invoice integration, and also enables account, product, and pricelist master data integration.

Project Service includes adjustments to approved time, expense, and journal lines, support for multiple time units on a single price list, and configuring a unit of time for estimating work on project tasks.

5. Global Capabilities

Microsoft’s core capabilities keep improving and its enhanced features enable businesses to meet their requirements effectively.

Enterprise credit management capabilities automate credit management processes for accounting and finance professionals to proactively suggest credit control activities that improve cash flow, reduce bad debts, and provide new account control management.

With dual currency, the reporting currency becomes a secondary currency and tracks the reporting currency in fixed assets, Accounts Receivable, Accounts Payable, and bank management.

Finance and accounting professionals use revenue recognition capabilities to automate compliance with IFRS and ASC 606 financial reporting standards.

6. Regulatory and Electronic Reporting

Every country has their own taxes and regulations. ERP systems must meet these local requirements, so Microsoft keeps adding localization features into Dynamics 365 for Finance and Operations.

Regulatory Services will provide functionality that can be integrated with any business application. This service allows developers building applications to focus on their core functionality rather than worrying about meeting the increasing number of legal requirements around the globe. Enhanced configurability features let partners and customers create extensions and customizations without coding. For example, they can configure the tax currency in tax documents to help customers with multiple branches in different countries.

In accordance with the legal requirements of various countries and regions, Dynamics 365 for Finance and Operations supports formats for both incoming and outgoing electronic documents. Because you configure formats instead of code, creating electronic documents is faster and easier. Forms like Vendor Check, Customer Sales Invoice, and Customer Purchase Order can be configured without involving a developer.

The update also adds new features like automatic comparison of electronic reporting format executions with baselines for automatic test capabilities. Relative paths in electronic reporting formulas allow quick remapping of the format if you need to switch to another data entity or XML node with a similar structure.

7. Optimization Advisor

Incorrectly configuring a module can adversely affect system performance and business operations. The correctness, completeness, and cleanliness of your business data also affects system performance, your organization's decision-making capabilities, and employee productivity.

The Optimization Advisor workspace is a tool that lets power users, business analysts, functional consultants, and IT support functions identify issues in module configuration and business data. Optimization Advisor suggests best practices for module configuration and identifies business data that is obsolete or incorrect.

Optimization Advisor periodically runs a set of best practice rules. When a violation is detected, an optimization opportunity is generated and appears in the Optimization Advisor workspace. A user can take corrective action directly from the Optimization Advisor workspace.

8. Distributed Order Management

Distributed Order Management (DOM) lets retailers take advantage of intelligent algorithms to optimize order fulfillment operations across their enterprise. DOM automatically determines the best possible fulfillment location across warehouses, distribution centers, or even stores based on user-definable profiles containing rules, scope, and delivery methods. Enhanced order fulfillment capabilities within Retail Modern POS and Cloud POS help turn each retail location into a micro-warehouse, ensuring that orders are filled as efficiently and cost-effectively as possible.

9. Vendor Collaboration

The Vendor Collaboration module is targeted at vendors who don't have electronic data interchange (EDI) integration with Microsoft Dynamics 365 for Finance and Operations. It lets vendors work with purchase orders (POs), invoices, consignment inventory information, and requests for quotation (RFQs), and also lets them access parts of their vendor master data. Notable features of this module include:

• Working with RFQs
• Vendor management, security, and compliance settings
• Working with POs (sending, confirming, changing, cancelling)
• PO status and version information
• Consignment inventory

10. Catch Weight Product Processing

This functionality will provide support for using catch weight products as part of warehouse management processes. Catch weight products are often used in industries like the food industry where products can vary slightly by weight, size, or both. Catch weight products use two units of measure — an inventory unit (kilograms) and a catch weight unit (boxes).

Within warehouse management processes, catch weight products can be handled in different units like pallets and boxes. For example, business processes can be granularly defined to perform inbound weighing on a per-pallet level and capture the outbound sales process during picking or packing according to catch weight quantity (boxes).

Conclusion

The features mentioned in this post aren’t all that Microsoft offers. Microsoft’s roadmap for new releases includes many other features designed to meet the growing demands of business users, and they will continue to expand their products’ integration capabilities to support these users’ diverse needs and specialized niches.

This article is a part of our Dynamics 365 blog series that keeps companies updated about the latest developments in the world of tech. For further information on Dynamics 365 for Finance and Operations, please contact Visionet Systems today.

This blog is already published on Visionet’s blog

Creating an effective domestic production model for Fashion & Apparel

Fashion & Apparel makes up a small portion of US imports but contributes to a disproportionate amount of the tariffs collected by the United States government. As the White House continues to hint at an expansion of tariffs to include a wide range of consumer goods that includes apparel and footwear, heavy reliance on imports is a major risk for the industry.

Few Fashion & Apparel retailers and designers have the capacity to establish in-house production, and creating that capacity in a short period is no mean feat. However, moving away from full package sourcing and outsourcing specific manufacturing processes to US factories is a comparatively easier and more manageable change in production operations that the industry can still explore.

Apparel, footwear, and travel goods represent 6% of US imports, but they contribute to 51% of the tariffs collected by the United States government.

The benefits of a domestic outsourcing production model are obvious: shorter lead times, the flexibility of easier in-season reorders, faster store replenishment, collaborative product design, more direct and on-the-spot quality control, flexibility in production capacity, centralized materials requirement planning (MRP), easier material safety and reorder point management, and, of course, lower tariff costs only paid for material imports.

However, there are many challenges that need to be managed for a successful transition:

1. Establish strong domestic partnerships with contractors and factories 
   The single most important aspect is onboarding the right contractors and factories for serving your product lines and categories. Building strong partnerships is essential for securing consistent lead-time commitments from contractors and factories. This requires supply chain visibility by continuously and consistently sharing sales and demand plans of new product lines, reorder and replenishment forecasts, and contractors’ progress reports. It’s essential that you have a domestic production solution that supports such collaboration.


2. Define production control and material management processes
   If your organization relies entirely on full package sourcing, processes for MRP, material purchase, issuance, and consumption are non-existent. Therefore, you don’t have the skillset you need in-house to scale to domestic production. Implementing new processes should focus on recruiting and/or training the right internal resources and setting up IT systems capable of Fashion & Apparel MRP and production management.


3. Set up warehouse for domestic production
   Next, identify the warehouse that will serve the contractors’ and factories’ material requirements. The warehouse has to be located nearby to ensure faster material issuance lead times. Warehouse managers need to allocate floor space and implement efficient material receiving, put-away, picking, and shipping processes. Implementing a digital warehouse management system (WMS) capable of materials management is a must.



4. Establish CoE steering committee
   Collaborating between different departments to achieve the eventual goal of timely, cost efficient products loved by consumers requires a concerted effort controlled by a steering committee of stakeholders from product design, production control, planning, material management, and logistics & distribution.
5. 
   
6. Establishing a Center of Excellence (CoE) steering committee brings your efforts together and keeps your teams focused on their shared objectives. It ensures smooth collaboration with contractors and factories, and allows merchandizers to lead product line success across all sales channels.


Expanding your production operations network isn’t just an onshoring effort to bring production back to domestic markets. It involves taking a fresh look at organizing new process models. Use self-service portals for partners to provide the following capabilities:
• Sharing demand forecast insights
• Visibility to new product lines
• Collaborative sampling processes
• Factory-driven material consumption reporting
• Factory-driven progress reporting
• Sharing estimated capacity requirements for in-season replenishments
To minimize operational costs and maximize ROI, the CoE steering committee should focus on establishing a digital workforce using intelligent/robotic process automation (RPA/IPA). Here are some process areas they could focus on:
• Work order issuance
• Vendor invoicing
• Contractor and vendor onboarding
• Material issuance and allocation
• Material consumption journal entries
• Work order progress reporting
• Material reorders
HauteLogic by Visionet Systems is a comprehensive, ready-to-deploy fashion solution for collaborative domestic Fashion & Apparel sourcing management, with self-service portals for contractors and factories and complete MRP and production control processes that are fully integrated with WMS and retail POS operations. Visionet and HauteLogic provide a full scope of services for establishing a digital workforce by effectively implementing RPA/IPA to enhance Fashion & Apparel operations.
Please contact Visionet Systems today to discover how our complete range of solutions and services are the best choice for your current and future fashion management needs.
References
https://sourcingjournal.com/topics/trade/clothing-imports-trade-104481/ https://apparelmag.com/fashion-gears-trade-warhttps://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-09-07/sneakers-phones-won-t-escape-another-tariff-round-unscathedhttps://www.washingtonpost.com/world/asia_pacific/asian-stocks-mixed-on-fears-of-more-us-tariffs-on-china/2018/09/10/55fce0c4-b4af-11e8-ae4f-2c1439c96d79_story.html?noredirect=on&utm_term=.c898f1d82a28https://www.visionetsystems.com/webinar/building-digital-partner-ecosystem-logistics-supply-chain-and-tradinghttps://www.visionetsystems.com/webinar/enhancing-supply-chain-efficiency-using-virtual-robots