The construction of collections, for a textile retailer, is a major, essential and complex process.
It is a matter of defining the collection in a detailed, iterative way, and on several axes.
Upstream of sales, a company will build forecasts: how much and how to spend? How much to earn and how? What offer for the customers?
The budgetary axis, often called the Purchase Budget, allows you to define the amount of purchases and to compare it with the revenue forecasts. We will think here, for example, turnover, sales quantity, net margin, average sales price, cost price, ...
The "product" axis will define the balance of the Offer. We will think here rather width and depth of range, top/bottom balance, theme, arrival of the Offer in time (implantation)...
The "assortment" axis will provide for the distribution of the Offer in the different types of sales outlets (large, medium and small stores, corners, franchises, international, web, etc.), which do not necessarily have the same space on the shelves and in the stockroom, the same seasonality, the same main ranges, etc.
Finally, when sales start, these different visions will collide with reality. It will be necessary to be able to manage stock landings, budget reallocations (when short replenishment circuits have been planned), promotion levels, etc. The Open to Buy (or rolling budget) will allow this fine and close follow-up.
To this must be added the hierarchical axis. General Management will define the "company" objectives, which will then be broken down into an N-level business hierarchy. For example, the "company" objective will be broken down into markets, which in turn will be broken down into broad and then finer product scopes.
Finally, these objectives will be set, always according to the hierarchical level of the person who decides them, in time. For example: first for the whole season, then by period, by week, ...
It is therefore a question of working on a corporate objective, the Collection, from several business and organizational perspectives.
Not easy at all!
All these business gestures are most of the time, in detail, very specific to each market, each brand.
History, internal organizational changes, the way omnichannel is understood, adaptation to the appearance of a new range or to the possibility of more detailed supply management, all contribute to the need for permanent evolution of software tools.
In this realm, the spreadsheet (Excel, Google Sheet) reigns because of its adaptability: you start quickly, you modify quickly.
A spreadsheet is a-business. It is generic, and everyone will put their own job in it.
So why, sometimes, so much suffering when business is accelerating? Why so much time wasted when there are multiple stakeholders, each with their own vision, indicators, methods and information granularity?
A spreadsheet does not allow a serene evolution of the tool. Its strength is its main weakness: information is linked by linking CELLS, not business concepts. As a result, businesses quickly think they are talking about the same thing, which is not the case. The stacking of formulas will quickly result in a spaghetti that is impossible to maintain and evolve, and well remembered in the hands of a single person who can leave with the history and knowledge.
A spreadsheet does not secure information. Generally, when you have access to a spreadsheet, you can do the same things as others. How many formulas have been modified by mistake, how many tabs have been renamed making the tool unusable, how many "bad versions" of the spreadsheet have been used, for how much time lost? How many data re-entries have resulted in errors that are very difficult to find and correct afterwards? Finally, how much sensitive and confidential data is being carried around via e-mails or USB keys?
A spreadsheet does not provide security of use and does not allow a clear and controlled definition of responsibilities and access to functions. It does not define, or very succinctly, a good breakdown of the rights on the data. Who has the right to do what, and on which data? It is not uncommon that, in the end, when operational deadlines are not met, the person responsible is simply the one who maintains the file...
A spreadsheet does not allow for good collaboration. It multiplies, by nature, the references (for example, the same family of products is found twice ... With and without capital letters. It multiplies the interventions of different actors on the same data, the same spreadsheets. The adaptation to the specific gestures of the different professions involved is limited. Either you try to build a generic tool that will not suit anyone, or a tool that suits everyone ... and quickly becomes unmanageable. Finally, one will (often) be tempted to create one's own version of the file, adapted, but one will thus go from one file to X files, multiplying destructive copy-paste, redundant data entry, ...
A NoCode platform allows you to create business applications without computer skills.
On this process of building the Offer, to be a credible alternative to spreadsheets, a NoCode platform must necessarily embrace the best of three worlds: the world of Excel, the world of enterprise software ... and the world of NoCode.
The essential mechanisms are the following.
The best of the Excel world:
- The formulas that will allow you to create links between business values, to calculate, to put conditions, conditional formatting, ... These elements are essential for an extreme adaptation to your business, your habits and your requirements.
- The components of type TCD (pivot table), graph, list, ...
- Native "Bottom Up and Top Down" mechanisms, allowing a good adaptation to the needs of Finance and Management Control professions
- The presence of native "temporal" elements allowing to work "in time" (e.g. create calendars by months, weeks, specific periods, which will be easily and naturally usable in the applications)
The best of the enterprise software world:
- A very detailed management of rights and accesses, both for the use of the applications built and for the administration or management of repositories, in order to control the deployment of the platform.
- Strong integration capabilities: to be able to receive data (repositories, operational data) and send it, in order to be able to position itself in the value chain, and not only at the end of the chain.
- Centralization of repositories: it is imperative to be connected to your information system and to receive data from repositories that will be common data for the applications created.
The best of NoCode:
- A broadening of the population of people capable of creating and maintaining applications, to no longer be dependent on scarce and overloaded technical skills.
- Extreme adaptation to the company's business practices and gestures by creating screens adapted to each one working on a coherent model corresponding finely to the considered Business.
- A drastic reduction in the time it takes to make applications available to the business.
NoCode : AllKeyMe
Our SaaS platform NoCode ALLKEYME is designed to provide an application "universe" for a type of need, covered today by spreadsheets (planning and monitoring of budgets, supply and operations, ...) and meets all these criteria.
Its use always starts with a precise need, which reveals all its richness.
Then, a universe opens up
