SAP Solution Brief SAP for Consumer Products

BEST PRACTICES SPEED IMPLEMENTATION OF IT FOR APPAREL AND FOOTWEAR INDUSTRY

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Apparel and footwear industry specialists can reduce costs by more than 50% using the preconfigured SAP Apparel and Footwear application. Built on the mySAP ERP solution, the application is an affordable option for companies seeking world-class technology tailored to industry needs. And thanks to the new SAP Best Practices for Apparel and Footwear offering, the application can be implemented quickly, with minimal disruption of operations.

The apparel and footwear industry is a global business with a supply base of more than 300,000 factories in 150 or more countries. It includes not only manufacturers and raw material and components suppliers, but also agents, importers, freight forwarders, and regulators a complex supply chain. To be successful in this arena, companies must turn a host of challenges into competitive opportunities. For example, as fashion trends change rapidly and consumers shift from traditional brands and designer clothes to private labels, apparel and footwear companies must synchronize long lead times with ever-shorter fashion cycles. They must launch new styles faster than ever to keep up with shorter product life cycles. They must capture and hold consumer and market attention. And they must optimize their sourcing strategy and increase their supply chain visibility down to the SKU level. In short, companies involved in the production, marketing, and sale of apparel and footwear must increase efficiencies, reduce costs, and ensure compliance with legal requirements and ethical guidelines across their entire supply chain. This is easier said than done. Most companies are hampered by a legacy of nonintegrated systems that limit visibility and perpetuate inefficiencies. And although many of them recognize the need to standardize on a single platform, none of them have the resources to engage in a long-term system implementation project with ill-defined business benefits. SAP offers an affordable alternative.

A Solution Built for You

Optimized Sourcing and Subcontracting

The SAP Apparel and Footwear (SAP AFS) application lets you make the changes you need with minimal disruption to your operations. This application combines the mySAP ERP solution with the SAP Best Practices for Apparel and Footwear offering to enable rapid implementation of the technology you need at a defined price. It increases your ability to meet market demands and compete effectively without straining your budget or risking your business. By pairing SAP AFS with the services of a recommended implementer such as an SAP partner or the SAP Consulting organization you can be enjoying the benefits of a fully configured enterprise-class solution in as little as 16 weeks, depending on your circumstances. This section outlines some of the functional advantages the offering provides.
Single Platform for Greater Effectiveness

Built to meet the special demands of the apparel and footwear industry, the application also lets you handle the procurement process effectively from material requirements planning, purchase order processing (including vendor selection), and goods receipts to logistics invoice verification. Moreover, it allows you to provide components and monitor production progress at the subcontractor level, thereby improving supply chain visibility and helping you control your business.
Integrated Stock Management

SAP AFS is supported by a single integrated platform whether it is managing your supply chain, logistics, operations, and customer and consumer services or managing your financial controlling and corporate services. This single platform the SAP NetWeaver platform solves the annoying problems posed by multivendor, heterogeneous IT environments. And because SAP AFS is built on open standards to facilitate future growth and flexible extensibility, it provides streamlined functionality that improves visibility, increases productivity, and helps you regain control of your business processes.
Extended Sales Order Processing

SAP AFS gives you integrated warehouse and inventory management capabilities down to the SKU level. When you carry out material movement postings, the application is updating the stock figures automatically in the background and these updated stock figures are visible in real time. Because it integrates logistics and financials functions, the application also enables real-time postings in accounting. In addition, it lets you segment stock by categories such as quality or country of origin throughout the entire logistical process.
Collaborative In-House and External Manufacturing

The application provides the tools you need for efficient management of production order processing at the SKU level. It also lets you handle individual external operations such as cutting, embroidery, and printing and provide the components for these operations to the subcontractor. And it enables you to combine several production orders sharing the same components or operations. Overall, the application increases transparency and efficiency throughout the manufacturing process.

SAP AFS manages the sales order process from order entry before and during the season to billing at the SKU level. It supports industry-specific season determination as well as rule-based allocation in short stock situations and against future receipts.

SAP Best Practices Ensure Your Business Success

Best Practices Lead to Outstanding Business Benefits

Based on years of experience working with companies in the apparel and footwear industry, SAP has developed an understanding of the industry best practices you need to maintain a competitive advantage. SAPs consulting and implementation services, combined with the expertise of its implementation partners, help you configure your new software application to perform these best practices. These services speed up your implementation and scope it properly to meet your needs as an apparel, footwear, sports, or fashion company. Based on the best practices it has developed for the apparel and footwear industry, SAP can offer you the application and services that help you improve operational efficiency while addressing regulatory compliance issues. And SAP Consulting and other recommended implementation partners can provide consulting and implementation services in conjunction with this solution. As a result, you can anticipate accelerated implementations, attention to integration risks, and easier adoption of new technologies. In short, the SAP Best Practices for Apparel and Footwear offering ensures your application provides: Sales order processing, including availability check Pricing down to the SKU level Seasonal processing Allocation of stock and future receipts Intercompany transactions Third-party order processing Finished goods sourcing Subcontracting Inventory management In-house and external manufacturing

Because the SAP AFS application is built on the best practices in the industry and designed by SAP experts with years of industryspecific experience, it results in a wide range of improvements and benefits. These benefits, described below, include rapid implementation at defined pricing, rich functionality, real value, and speed and flexibility.
Rapid Implementation at a Defined Price

SAP and a recommended implementer, such as SAP Consulting or an SAP implementation partner, offer predefined pricing structures tied to a phased implementation approach. By clearly defining the SAP software configuration and settings needed to address your specific challenges, SAP is able to articulate the scope of each implementation phase in exact terms. Thus the entire process is transparent, and contingencies are greatly minimized. The streamlined implementation is designed to minimize disruptions to your business while maximizing cross-enterprise adoption. Furthermore, each phase of the implementation can help you realize a higher overall return on investment and a lower total cost of ownership (TCO).
Richest Functionality Available

The applications support for industry best practices is based on 15 years of feedback from more than 300 SAP apparel, footwear, sports, and fashion customers as well as feedback from SAP partners who have managed hundreds of implementation projects and rollouts. In addition, numerous analysts have rated SAP number one in terms of functional completeness. And SAP is a recognized leader in the development of solutions for supply chain management, supplier relationship management, customer relationship management, and product life-cycle management.

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Real Value

In an international benchmarking study entitled Enhanced Project Success Through SAP Best Practices (SAP Press, 2004), Martin Selchert credits SAP Best Practices with improving labor efficiency by as much as 40%, reducing inventory by an average of 30%, and cutting financial closing time in half. The same study concludes that SAP Best Practices reduce overall operating costs 20% over a three-year period, attributable primarily to the redesign of business processes. And they reduce overall project costs 22%, attributable primarily to a decrease in time-dependent costs.
Speed and Flexibility

mySAP ERP, the core technology used in the SAP Apparel and Footwear application, is powered by the SAP NetWeaver platform the open integration and application platform that provides the best way to integrate all systems running SAP or non-SAP software. SAP NetWeaver unifies integration technologies into a single platform and is preintegrated with business applications, enabling change and reducing the need for custom integration.

SAP AFS is preconfigured to speed implementation, cut deployment, and minimize maintenance costs. It has the flexibility necessary to deploy functions all at once, individually, or for specific processes. And its open architecture helps you leverage existing applications and protect your investment.
A Safe and Affordable Option

SAP AFS is built on SAPs extensive knowledge of business processes, acquired through serving thousands of customers in more than 25 industries. It is an affordable application. Like the majority of SAP solutions, it is not intended just for major multinational corporations. (Nearly 60% of all SAP installations are in organizations with annual revenues of less than US$500 million.) By integrating users, processes, and data within the organization and beyond, SAP AFS can help you create unparalleled efficiencies and collaboration across your entire value chain. With its predetermined scope and fast implementation enhanced through SAP Best Practices for Apparel and Footwear it offers you the benefits of security, innovation, and low TCO.

Best practices enable your SAP AFS application to provide: Flexible and powerful technology combined with robust scalability designed for investment protection Vendor stability that mitigates risk and offers a rich heritage of world-class customer support Rapid time-to-benefit with minimal disruption of business activities
Find Out More

To learn more about how SAP Best Practices offerings and industry-specific applications such as SAP AFS can help your company achieve higher levels of business success, please contact your SAP representative or visit us at www.sap.com/consumer.

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