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Casual Articles - IT Usage in the Apparel Industry
It could be argued that the history of business began with the introduction of the legally enforceable contract. Prior to then, commerce had been a free for all, and the side with the biggest army usually won. After contracts were introduced, some 4,000 years ago, business began to have the predictability it needed to flourish. A number of contracts survive from this time period, and they all tend to be concise and remarkably clear in their meaning. The same cannot be said for many of the contracts of today.There are several new trends in the creative use of contracts by telecommunications corporations that not only threaten to vastly limit the gr
Secondly, the Indian Auto-ancillary industry is a close parallel. This industry has emerged as a leading sourcing destination for automobile majors. Despite the mounting steel prices and the fact that steel is a m
The US postal service delivers about 500 million pieces of mail everyday, which shows that the usage of stamps is quite high. Either this could be due to the lower stamp prices or people are still used to writing letters. The costs of stamps are mainly determined due to the popularity and are produced largely.Every year millions of letters are stuffed and mechanically hauled in service trucks, which take them to special sorting centers. From there the letters are put on mail airplanes, which in turn transport them into the delivery vans of local postal carriers. This long drawn procedure being ancient is suspected of being the cause of stagnant co
For an industry of this stature and size, the usage of IT by the Indian apparel industry has been woefully inadequate. North American and European apparel companies spend about 3 to 5% of their revenues on IT. The Indian apparel industry in contrast, has typically invested less than 1%.
Historically there have been many reasons for this low usage.
1) Earlier most of the software suppliers in the Indian market have been North American or European companies for e.g., in the case of CAD, the earliest vendors in the Indian market were Gerber and Lectra. In 1995 CAD solutions were available for about USD 45000! Today the same solution is available at USD 15000.
2) Earlier vendors had proprietary solutions that were not compatible with other applications. Customers who bought a CAD system had to buy it from the same vendor the next time; this was used for 'vendor lock-in’. Often this meant that the vendor had no incentive for quality support or for innovative research leading to reduced prices.
3) The small pool of professionals trained on IT applications of the apparel industry meant there were not enough people who could be recruited from the market in case someone changed jobs.
Fortunately for India, a lot has changed. Firstly, the Indian Software industry has come of age and India is widely regarded today as one among the hottest destinations for software engineering. Almost all software majors including IBM, Microsoft, and Oracle have engineering and R&D centers in India today.
Secondly, the Indian Auto-ancillary industry is a close parallel. This industry has emerged as a leading sourcing destination for automobile majors. Despite the mounting steel prices and the fact that steel is a ma
Email is both a blessing and a real annoyance to businesses. It allows you to send a quick message to your clients or to your employees in a branch office hundreds of miles away. But it can also leave you vulnerable to viruses that can cause your server to crash, spam that can eat away at huge parts of your day, and can put confidential company information out into public cyberspace. What should you be doing to protect your business?1. Mistake #1 – You do not have any policies in place for the use of your email system. If you do not want your employees using company time and company resources to send pornography, bad jokes, or company secrets,
For an industry of this stature and size, the usage of IT by the Indian apparel industry has been woefully inadequate. North American and European apparel companies spend about 3 to 5% of their revenues on IT. The Indian apparel industry in contrast, has typically invested less than 1%.
Historically there have been many reasons for this low usage.
1) Earlier most of the software suppliers in the Indian market have been North American or European companies for e.g., in the case of CAD, the earliest vendors in the Indian market were Gerber and Lectra. In 1995 CAD solutions were available for about USD 45000! Today the same solution is available at USD 15000.
2) Earlier vendors had proprietary solutions that were not compatible with other applications. Customers who bought a CAD system had to buy it from the same vendor the next time; this was used for 'vendor lock-in’. Often this meant that the vendor had no incentive for quality support or for innovative research leading to reduced prices.
3) The small pool of professionals trained on IT applications of the apparel industry meant there were not enough people who could be recruited from the market in case someone changed jobs.
Fortunately for India, a lot has changed. Firstly, the Indian Software industry has come of age and India is widely regarded today as one among the hottest destinations for software engineering. Almost all software majors including IBM, Microsoft, and Oracle have engineering and R&D centers in India today.
Secondly, the Indian Auto-ancillary industry is a close parallel. This industry has emerged as a leading sourcing destination for automobile majors. Despite the mounting steel prices and the fact that steel is a m
I used to love that song 'It's Got To Be Perfect' by Fairground Attraction. But they are musicians, their message isn't appropriate in the world of sales. The opposite is closer to the truth. Here's another way of saying the same, 'If it's worth doing, it's worth doing badly'.Before you get excited and tell me how wrong I am, let me explain by asking you a question. Do you take a long time preparing things, trying to get them just right before you implement them?For example, if I suggested that you make a list of 10 new potential customers and then get on the phone and ask if there is anything that you could help them with. How long would i
1) Earlier most of the software suppliers in the Indian market have been North American or European companies for e.g., in the case of CAD, the earliest vendors in the Indian market were Gerber and Lectra. In 1995 CAD solutions were available for about USD 45000! Today the same solution is available at USD 15000.
2) Earlier vendors had proprietary solutions that were not compatible with other applications. Customers who bought a CAD system had to buy it from the same vendor the next time; this was used for 'vendor lock-in’. Often this meant that the vendor had no incentive for quality support or for innovative research leading to reduced prices.
3) The small pool of professionals trained on IT applications of the apparel industry meant there were not enough people who could be recruited from the market in case someone changed jobs.
Fortunately for India, a lot has changed. Firstly, the Indian Software industry has come of age and India is widely regarded today as one among the hottest destinations for software engineering. Almost all software majors including IBM, Microsoft, and Oracle have engineering and R&D centers in India today.
Secondly, the Indian Auto-ancillary industry is a close parallel. This industry has emerged as a leading sourcing destination for automobile majors. Despite the mounting steel prices and the fact that steel is a m
Fear will jetison you into fight or flight mode. Resistance will try to figure things out. Why? Because fear is a vibration of powerlessness and resistance is a vibration of opposition.On an energetic level, powerlessness feels quite different from opposition. Test it out. Think this thought: fear. How did your body respond to the thought of fear? Did you notice your eyes dilating? Did you experience rapid and shallow breathing? Did your eyes narrow and dart around the room looking for an escape route or assault weapon? Could you feel your body winding-up, getting ready to spring?Now, think this thought: opposition. How did your
3) The small pool of professionals trained on IT applications of the apparel industry meant there were not enough people who could be recruited from the market in case someone changed jobs.
Fortunately for India, a lot has changed. Firstly, the Indian Software industry has come of age and India is widely regarded today as one among the hottest destinations for software engineering. Almost all software majors including IBM, Microsoft, and Oracle have engineering and R&D centers in India today.
Secondly, the Indian Auto-ancillary industry is a close parallel. This industry has emerged as a leading sourcing destination for automobile majors. Despite the mounting steel prices and the fact that steel is a m
If you have ever simply watched people at work you will find that many often come in late or miss work entirely for days on end. We may be able to draw a connection in our reasoning that says all these people showing up 10 minutes late can add up to lots of lost revenue for the company. The problem is how to control attendance issues and still treat everyone fairly?A CCH study on unexcused absenteeism indicates that 83% of employers feel that unexcused absenteeism will continue to rise. The problem is that absenteeism costs have been growing which now range around $800 per employee per year. It doesn’t seem like much but when this cost is multipli
Secondly, the Indian Auto-ancillary industry is a close parallel. This industry has emerged as a leading sourcing destination for automobile majors. Despite the mounting steel prices and the fact that steel is a major component of the automobile cost; the vehicle costs have remained stable. Are you wondering how? Well, this has been made possible because of IT adoption by the Indian spare-part suppliers. IT has enabled the Indian auto-ancillary industry to streamline their processes and aggressively cut costs. For the Indian apparel industry to emerge as the favourite outsourcing destination for leading brands and retailers world-wide, it needs to emulate the IT strategy of the auto-ancillary industry.
Thirdly, Indian apparel companies have grown from family run to professionally organized set ups, giving more emphasis on implementing IT solutions to increase the productivity and also providing us considerable domain expertise.
Finally, institutions like NIFT, ATDC, ALT, Pearl academy etc played a pioneering role in training large number of professionals for the industry.
Many believe it is only a matter of time before an Indian company scales to become the largest software company globally catering to the apparel industry.
In this scenario, it is only logical that the Indian apparel industry is able to derive benefits of the acknowledged strengths of the Indian software industry.
Indeed it can be argued that, investment in software to create a nimble enterprise that responds to external and internal customers in real time to reduce throughput times, costs and improve quality is India's defense against China's huge factories that derive benefits from economies of scale. This is especially true as India is likely to continue to excel in high value added styles of smaller order quantities.
There are already a number of functionally rich, user friendly software applications available in India. For e.g., REACH CAD, REACH Fashion Studio, REACH Merchandising Manager, REACH Cut planner etc are offered by REACH Technologies and are being used by
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