K3 has a North Star focus on fashion and apparel
As a Microsoft Cloud for Retail launch partner, K3’s team of expert solution architects and developers support businesses in their mission to transform retail for good. K3 builds market-redefining software capabilities and delivers future-leading strategies to promote digital adoption, sustainability, and optimised business processes in fashion, footwear and apparel. In an interview with Fibre2Fashion, K3’s Chief Commercial Officer Kimberly Morgan and Fashion Technology Evangelist Rik Veltman discuss how companies can start future-proofing their supply chains today.
What are the main challenges fashion brands face in implementing omnichannel strategies, and how can they overcome them?
One of the main challenges fashion brands face in implementing omnichannel strategies is the difficulty in creating a central repository for data from various sources. Many brands still operate on outdated systems, resulting in scattered and siloed data. The K3 Omnichannel Platform helps brands consolidate this data, allowing them to better understand it and derive intelligent insights. The same issue applies to physical inventory, which is often divided by channel. This separation frequently leads to problems in allocating available inventory against orders, due to issues such as the location of the stock, its ownership, and how it is recorded in different systems.
How do you ensure world-class implementation and delivery of these solutions?
We have an extensive partner network that spans the globe, all of which are Microsoft resellers. Since our solutions are embedded in Microsoft’s tech stack, the partner network already has deep subject matter expertise, and we further train partners on our solutions to ensure they are fully prepped to seamlessly implement our combined offering to customers. Our partners include the likes of HSO International, Columbus, Navipro, Infosys, Mazars, Flintech, Admiral Consulting, AlfaPeople, Elbek & Vejrup, Hitachi, and Avanade. Our new releases and functionality are well documented, added with training materials, and where needed, short explainer videos. Every half year, we also host ‘what’s new’ sessions to share details about all the newly added functions and features.
Could you share examples of how K3 BTG’s sustainability solutions benefit both the environment and business profitability in the fashion and retail industry?
While there is a lot of legislation now in place, with more set to be introduced in the coming years, the reality is that fashion companies’ supply chains are opaque. What this crucially means is that many brands are not in a position to disclose transparent information to suit social and environmental legislative mandates because they do not have access to this data to begin with. And this is where K3 can help. We have a dedicated Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) module that supplies brands with CSR data on their raw materials and products that can be used to establish rules in our solutions. This enables companies to block purchase orders from suppliers who do not meet their appropriate CSR requirements. Equipped with this capability, brands can ensure that they only work with companies that are in line with their own personal CSR policies, enabling socially and eco-friendly business conduct. Furthermore, brands can then openly discuss the positive steps they have taken to ‘do better’ and appeal to the ever-growing number of consumers who desire socially and ethically responsible practices to boost profitability.
In the context of the fashion and retail industry, how can tailored software solutions help businesses address their specific challenges and achieve their goals?
In the fashion and retail industry, tailored software solutions are increasingly vital for addressing specific challenges and achieving business goals. Just as mobile phones receive regular updates to add new features and enhance security, modern ERP solutions also undergo frequent updates. However, these updates can affect any bespoke, customer-specific developments, signalling the end of an era for customisation. The fashion industry is highly nuanced and complex, making standardised software solutions that are tailored for fashion crucial for success in today's market. By adopting such solutions, brands can more easily manage historically complex operations—such as handling items with multiple colours, sizes, and fits—thereby improving efficiency and facilitating scalability.
In the fast-paced world of fashion, what role does data analytics and reporting play in helping brands make informed decisions and optimise their processes?
In the fast-paced fashion industry, data analytics and reporting play a pivotal role in helping brands make informed decisions and optimise their processes. While consumers may not be aware, the planning for a fashion collection begins far earlier than the weeks leading up to its launch. By utilising advanced planning and forecasting capabilities, brands can leverage historical sales data and market trend analyses to make smarter decisions concerning inventory levels, production schedules, and season-specific marketing strategies. This data is vital for understanding product performance, emerging trends, and customer preferences. Such insights are essential for determining which products will be featured in a particular season and in what quantities they should be produced.
In omnichannel strategies, how does the company help businesses meet customers where they want to be met?
Today, fashion businesses have countless data sources all of which contain essential information on their customers. But without a means to collate this data and turn it into actionable insights, it is useless to brands. The K3 Omnichannel Platform empowers businesses to leverage incoming data from their suppliers or systems to make better use of the information. This is important because consumers today have a wealth of choice as to where to take their business, which means that brands must be able to understand what it is their customers actually want. By leveraging these insights, brands can meet their customers where they want to be met to help win more business in an increasingly competitive marketplace.
What strategies ensure top-notch customer support and service when customers engage with K3 BTG’s solutions?
K3 customers benefit from the fact that we are focused on the fashion industry and that most of our customers are fashion customers. We understand our customers and speak their language. We build our software based on their current requirements and future needs. Our support extends beyond just the design and implementation stages of a project. We offer ongoing industry expertise from the inception of the project through to its delivery. Even after the project is completed, we continue to provide new features and functions to our customers, aiming to continually improve their business operations.
How can fashion and retail brands ensure their tech solutions remain adaptable to meet evolving consumer preferences?
The key to ensuring that tech solutions for fashion and retail brands remain adaptable lies in maintaining a single, reliable version of data. Consumer preferences can be fickle, with trends appearing and disappearing almost overnight. Access to comprehensive forecasting functionality enables brands to quickly identify what products will be in demand and when. For instance, K3's solutions offer extensive forecasting capabilities to ensure that our clients always have the right product in the right place at the right time for the end consumer. Moreover, K3 develops its software to be easily extendable. Following Microsoft's development approach, all components of what we build are open to modification and improvement; we do not rely on hard-coding. This development methodology ensures that K3 remains flexible and adaptable to future requirements.
You are going to speak at the 38th IAF World Fashion Convention this month. What will be your theme and what is its significance for the industry?
We are mirroring IAF’s theme this year and will be discussing the ways that fashion businesses can build smarter, stronger, and more sustainable supply chains. The past few years have shown us all just how vulnerable supply chains really are and this is a concern that is weighing heavily on the minds of fashion executives and leaders. Fortunately, this is a topic that we have considerable expertise on, and we are readily available to discuss how companies can start future-proofing their supply chains today.
Can you explain K3 BTG’s use of emerging tech to keep fashion businesses competitive and brief how these technologies are applied?
Lately, there is a special focus on AI and how to leverage this within fashion. For K3, this is not design or designer focused, but we are looking at how the information these hundreds of thousands of records created seasonally can be used to improve or ease our daily life. As a learning experience, we are using AI today to automatically read images, and to add item details to products automatically (short sleeve, V-neck, zipper fly etc). Also, we use AI capabilities to translate. But promising features will come soon!
Regarding analytics, what data and metrics do your solutions offer for informed decision-making in fashion and retail?
K3 Fashion and K3 Pebblestone enable smarter decision-making by offering comprehensive planning capabilities. Crucially, this empowers brands to better understand market trends, analyse historical sales data, and leverage customer preferences to glean intelligent insights. These insights then provide the necessary actions for brands to take when planning their collections, helping to ensure an optimal product assortment is selected and delivered.
Can you provide an overview of K3 Business Technology Group and its mission in the fashion and retail industry?
K3’s mission is simple: to enable. Our fashion solution portfolio offers comprehensive functionality that enables companies to more easily manage complex inventory and supply chain operations, leverage data to drive smarter decisions, and alleviate their biggest pains.
What specific solutions and services does the company offer to businesses in the fashion and retail industry?
Our fashion solution portfolio comprises K3 Fashion, embedded in D365 F&O, and K3 Pebblestone, embedded in D365 Business Central. Both solutions offer a wealth of functionality that is standardised specifically for fashion and apparel, helping customers to avoid complexity and realise quicker ROI.
In fashion, it is very normal to develop multiple collections each year, where each collection holds hundreds of new items in several colours in many sizes. As transactions happen on a SKU or variant level (item, colour, size and fit level), this leads to hundreds of thousands of transaction lines annually, and for large brands, even seasonally. K3’s solutions support handling large volumes of data throughout the system, whether it concerns order creation, order change management, prepack handling, allocation, communication with vendors or for planning and managing the different channels using the added planning functions. K3 adds functions to mass create and update purchase, cost and sales/retail prices, template functionality to easily add measurements, BOM (bill of materials) details and lifecycle plans. Everywhere you find aggregation options to filter or group items together by category, collection, season, or even by attribute like sleeve lengths, or neckline etc. This is just a small sample of the solutions we offer to businesses. We also support manufacturing, sustainability, and corporate social responsibility.
Could you highlight recent industry-specific solutions by the company and how they address the evolving needs of fashion and retail businesses?
Recently, we have gone to market with K3 ViJi, a supply chain traceability tool that enables brands to gain control over their ESG challenges. This is achieved by brands onboarding their supplier network who then submit their certificates and documentation. We have direct alignments with certification bodies, which allows us to automatically validate the data. In the end, this provides brands with real-time insights to better understand their supply chain weaknesses. From there, they can decide which action to take that best suits their ESG policies.
Next to CSR/ESG functionality, we are constantly looking at ways to enhance our solution. One example is added functionality to manage and control the whole salesmen sample flow. Most companies do not control their salesmen sample process using an ERP solution, but K3 allows this, in a flexible way, separating the samples from bulk transactions, allowing for differences in, for instance, transportation and pricing. Also, K3 allows customers to continue working in different silos like wholesale, retail and online. The business will also handle its inventory in these silos. Yet, at the end, K3 allows for system separation for as long as it is needed, as the inventory itself is not siloed and can be shared and utilised using priority settings and overrides. The next thing we are working on is to facilitate product sourcing at multiple locations in multiple origins, to allow for combining nearshoring and offshoring of the same product.
Finally, what advice would you give to businesses in the fashion and retail sector considering working with you?
It is important to consider what is crucial to your business. The reality is, there are many ERP providers in the market, but their solutions are generic in nature, and do not offer fashion-specific functionality that is intended to solve your biggest challenges. With the combined package of Dynamics 365 and K3, you will have a total solution that can support your entire operations, while also minimising historically complex fashion processes.
Could you detail what a “total unified commerce experience” means and how does the company help businesses offer it to their customers?
Our fashion portfolio is embedded in Microsoft Dynamics, and because of this alignment, K3 Fashion customers benefit from the capabilities already available in Standard D365 F&O. K3 adds critical functionality for end users by making CSR details and product measurement details available on the POS and in the online store. Also, by setting channel priorities, we ensure consumers can be prioritised to receive their ordered products, ensuring the right inventory meets the right customer, protecting a brand’s bottom line, maximising consumption and minimising waste.
What sets K3 BTG apart from other software solution providers in the fashion and retail industry?
Put simply, K3 has a North Star focus on fashion and apparel. We chose to embed our solutions in Microsoft’s tech stack as it allowed us to strictly focus on developing functionality for fashion and apparel. Customers can utilise the D365 solutions to handle the rest of their operations, and leverage our solutions’ standardised functionality to manage their fashion-specific processes. Crucially, this empowers them to run their entire operations through one system, meaning they only receive a single source of data truth to further bolster their efficiency. Our offering is so rich in terms of available functionality, that it is possible to limit bespoke development to an absolute bare minimum and in parallel eliminate duplicative and competing third party inputs. Whatever K3 develops, is developed for the industry, and thus becomes part of the standard.
