Leveraging technology to build a resilient supply chain: A framework for fashion, apparel and footwear companies

Leveraging Technology to Build a Resilient Supply Chain: A Framework for Fashion, Apparel and Footwear Companies

Enjoy this talk from Annie Graziani, Sunrise’s fashion expert, from PI Apparel’s Spotlight session on Supply Chain Transparency and Visibility.

Let’s face it: legacy fashion supply chains are broken. In the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, it’s become apparent that new models are needed to create a more secure, sustainable, and resilient future for fashion and apparel brands. In this talk, Annie discusses some of the challenges and opportunities inherent in today’s fashion landscape.

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Whether you’re exploring your options for new business platforms, or ready to get started, we are trusted business partners for some of the world’s most well-known brands. With over 25 years of experience with the Microsoft stack, we can help you understand all the capabilities Microsoft has to offer.

Vera Bradley case study video

Vera Bradley Case Study

Hear from Tonya Ream, VP of Information Technology at Vera Bradley, and Adam Carrick, Project Manager at Sunrise, on how Vera Bradley replaced its ERP and entire omni-channel landscape during a global pandemic. You’ll learn how both project teams adjusted to working remotely and the key factors that ensured Vera Bradley went live on time and on budget. This presentation was recorded at Dynamics 365 UG Summit 2020. You can read more about Vera Bradley here.

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Can your systems keep your brand’s promises?

As the Chief Administrative Officer for Sunrise Technologies, Heather Essic is responsible for overseeing Sunrise operations, including finance, marketing, and pre-sales. Prior to being named the Chief Administrative Officer, Heather was Sunrise’s Director of Business Development for Existing Customers, leading extensive sales cycles for Microsoft Dynamics 365 and consulting.

Trust. It’s hard to gain, and easy to lose. And for brands, consumer trust is essential for growth. One of the most challenging parts of growing a company is maintaining your brand’s reputation while expanding into new products, channels, and regions. You may be thinking about different expansion strategies. But have you considered all the ways in which your legacy systems might be affected?

What is a brand promise?
Different expansion strategies
How branching out can affect legacy systems
How a global platform supports your brand
Frequently asked questions

What is a brand promise?

A brand promise is the experience or product your customers can expect to receive every time they interact with your company. Customers need to know you, like you, and then trust you. A person’s connection to a brand is built on trust.

Different expansion strategies

There are three paths companies typically follow as they begin to grow:

Products: As a brand becomes more popular, it may branch out into new product categories. For example, a fashion brand may start selling accessories, then handbags, then shoes.
Sales channels: Next, that same brand might open brick and mortar retail stores. Conversely, it might start selling online.
Locations: Finally, this brand is ready to sell products in new regions or countries. Many companies start by using distributors in other countries before opening international offices or stores.

How branching out can affect legacy systems

The biggest challenge, whether you’re opening your first retail store or your first international office, is keeping the brand promise. The biggest mistake we’ve seen companies make during one of these expansions is installing a legacy business application that serves one strategy but not another.

Let’s say you are an apparel company selling to wholesalers in the U.S. — there are plenty of low-cost apparel management systems for your industry. But that type of system will buckle if you try to expand into new channels, markets, or products.

Or maybe you’re a catalog retailer, branching out into wholesale. Can your current systems handle those types of business processes, like B2B accounts receivables, net terms, cash discounts, or chargebacks?

We’ve heard this story many times: a growing brand chooses a business system (or a few legacy applications) for the business they have right now, but not for the future. Then, as the company grows, their legacy systems are strained. The results are poor customer experience, inventory problems, and other nightmares that frustrate customers and erode their trust. As the brand promise falters, eventually so does the brand.

How a single global platform supports your brand’s promise

Don’t be shortsighted when you select an ERP system. The best thing you can do while you’re still a growing brand is choose a business application that can support different products, sales channels, and regions. A global platform, running on a single database can handle these kinds of processes from the beginning.

Frequently asked questions

Aren’t customizations an option?

They are. But customizing your business applications is a short-term solution. They won’t support your company in the long run.

I’m concerned about cost; aren’t global ERP systems expensive and time-consuming?

The ERP industry has evolved over the last few years, especially with the ubiquity of cloud computing. Systems like Dynamics 365 are built for multi-dimensional, global businesses.

I still need industry-specific solutions to run my business. What are my options?

You can definitely use a global system like Dynamics 365 with industry-specific solutions. Our customers use Sunrise 365 Supply Chain and Retail Replenishment solutions to get specific inventory, supply chain, and retail functions for their businesses, without customizing their core ERP software code.

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To customize, or not to customize?

Implementing a cloud-based ERP system like Microsoft Dynamics 365 is essential for organizations seeking to stay competitive. However, one topic that often causes hesitation during ERP projects is customizations. While ERP customizations have historically been a source of frustration, particularly when they lead to long-term maintenance issues or system instability, a “no customization” policy isn’t always the best approach. The key is knowing when customizations add value versus when they create unnecessary complexity.

Understanding When to Customize Your ERP System

Not all customizations are created equal. The decision to customize should never be taken lightly, but avoiding all customizations across the board can leave your organization struggling to maintain a competitive edge. A better approach is to evaluate whether a customization serves a clear business purpose. Customizations should align with your company’s goals and long-term strategy, enabling your teams to perform at their best while enhancing overall efficiency.

Gap-Fit Analysis: Identifying When Customizations Are Necessary

During the early stages of an ERP project, your team will engage in a gap-fit analysis to document current business processes and compare them with the new system’s out-of-the-box functionality. This is where the decision to customize or change your processes often comes into play. Should the software be customized to fit your current business processes, or should your processes adapt to fit the software?

There are pros and cons to each approach. Customizing the software may seem like a faster, easier option in the short term, especially when users resist change. But using customizations as a shortcut can result in significant long-term costs, from ongoing maintenance to system updates that break existing custom code. On the other hand, asking your team to change ingrained business processes can be time-consuming and may lead to friction during implementation.

The trick is finding the right balance. Customizations should be reserved for areas that truly impact your company’s uniqueness or provide a competitive advantage.

Strategic Factors to Consider Before Customizing

Adding Value to the Organization

Customizations should deliver measurable value. Will the customization improve efficiency, enhance the customer experience, or contribute to higher revenue streams? If the answer is yes, it may be worth considering. However, any customization should align with your organization’s broader strategic goals and business objectives.

One good rule of thumb is to ask: Will this customization make my business more competitive in the marketplace? If the answer is no, it might be better to explore standard functionality or process changes.

Streamlining Processes

A well-planned customization can help streamline workflows by automating repetitive tasks, simplifying processes, or integrating disparate systems. For instance, if your business relies heavily on manual processes, a customization could significantly reduce time and labor costs.

However, remember that customizing software to match inefficient processes isn’t the answer. Consider whether changing your business processes could deliver similar efficiency gains without the need for custom code.

Exploring Low-Code Alternatives

Before diving into full-blown customizations, consider low-code solutions, such as Microsoft’s Power Platform. Low-code platforms allow you to build custom applications with minimal development effort, providing needed functionality without heavy investments in development or future maintenance.

The Power Platform integrates seamlessly with Dynamics 365, giving users the flexibility to extend the ERP system without feeling like they’re interacting with a completely different solution. This approach can reduce complexity and help you avoid the maintenance issues that customizations can introduce, all while enhancing user satisfaction.

Evaluating the Long-Term Feasibility of Customizations

It’s easy to overlook the long-term implications of customizations, but it’s critical to assess their feasibility over time. Customizations require ongoing updates, especially as cloud platforms evolve. You’ll need to ensure that your customizations remain compatible with future upgrades and don’t become a burden on your IT team.

When evaluating whether a customization is sustainable, consider:

The resources required to maintain and update the customization over time.
The potential impact on future upgrades or new system features.
Whether the customization aligns with the long-term goals of your business.

By thinking ahead, you can ensure that customizations don’t become obstacles but rather sustainable enhancements that support your growth.

Everything You Need For A

SUCCESSFUL IMPLEMENTATION

Cloud-based ERPs have changed implementation best practices and methodologies. Based on over 30 years of experience, we’ve identified seven critical factors that influence whether a project succeeds or fails.

Ready for your tailored ERP solution?

Schedule a call with one of our ERP experts today to implement Dynamics 365 with less cost and fewer customizations.

Don’t underestimate data migration

As a Director of Consulting for Sunrise Technologies, Jason Wolf has over 15 years of experience implementing Dynamics ERP solutions for apparel, footwear, retail, and consumer goods companies.

ERP implementations are tough

Over the years, implementation partners have created methodologies, project management and planning tools to account for every aspect of an ERP implementation. Yet it’s still common to see data migration get left behind during project planning. We believe this is backwards, since without the data, your new ERP system can’t go live. Data migration should be considered at the beginning of an ERP project, while other important design decisions are being made. By taking the time upfront to plan your migration strategy, you can avoid unexpected delays during your project.

Why migration planning is so important
Data migration strategies
Data cleansing
Validation and testing
Frequently asked questions

Data migration can make or break your implementation

Migration planning should happen early in the project. Getting a jumpstart on the challenges for each data structure can save tons of time, and safeguard against unexpected hiccups during the project. It also gives the project team a better idea on timelines and resources needed to get from the old system to the new one. The bigger the change to a data structure (especially master data structures like product, customer, vendor, etc.,) the more challenging it will be to move to the new system. Without a plan in place, budgets can run over, timelines run long, or an issue stalls the process late in the project.

Selecting a strategy for data migration

The key to a smooth migration is picking the right strategy. One size does NOT fit all, which is why it’s important to spend time early in the project deciding on the best method. Some examples are:

Bill of Materials data might be complex, with significant changes to the data structure. However, the volume might be small enough that it’s easier to enter it manually. For very complex data structures, it doesn’t make sense to write a migration script that you’ll only use once, when in the same amount of time you could just enter the data.
Sales orders (or other types of transactional data), might be thousands or even hundreds of thousands of lines long. In that case, it might be better to create an automated script to move and map the data.

Cleaning the data

One of the unsung benefits of an implementation is getting a fresh start with clean, well-organized data. You can’t realize all the benefits of a new ERP system if your data is riddled with errors. Take this opportunity to remove redundancies, append missing information, fix typos and errors, and archive what you won’t need going forward. The key is to clean the data before migrating to the new system. Source data should be audited, issues resolved quickly, and controls set up for maintaining data quality and governance in the new ERP system. Much of this data cleansing work is manual, but it’s worth it to get the full value out of your implementation.

Data validation

The only way to know for sure that the data migrated successfully is to check. The basic process is to start with a small amount of data, load it into the new ERP system, test, add more, and repeat. Once the migration is complete, you can validate it by checking against the source system. For example, say you want to check your open sales orders. You could check the line counts, quantity, and amount against the original source and if the numbers match, you’re good to go.

Frequently asked questions

When should we start thinking about data migration strategy?

As early as possible! A data migration strategy should be considered early in the project, while other key design decisions are being made.

How do we decide which strategy to use for data migration?

There isn’t a one-size-fits-all approach for data migration. Your implementation partner should offer guidance based on their experience. In general, for lower volumes, it might be more efficient to manually enter the data rather than spend time creating an automated script. For very large sets of data that contain complex mapping and business logic, automation may be the way to go.

How should we handle data cleansing?

Clean your data in the source system prior to the migration.

How do we validate that the migration was successful?

Create a checklist to test what’s in your new system against the legacy data source.

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What kills an ERP project?

As a Project Manager for Sunrise Technologies, Kristin Pehilj brings over 20 years of industry experience to the table and serves as a trusted advisor for apparel, footwear, and consumer goods companies that are in the midst of an ERP replacement.

No one wants to think about it, but your ERP project might fail. And while there’s a wealth of analysis on why ERP implementations fail, we consider one factor to be the difference between an implementation’s success or failure. Executive involvement is key — without it, an ERP project will struggle from the beginning and may not recover.

Change management

The executive’s role

Steering committee meetings

Frequently asked questions

More than just an ERP project

An ERP implementation is really a change management initiative. Just with more software involved. Asking people to change is never easy. It’s up to your company’s leaders to champion the project and guide your employees throughout the process.

Once a project is underway (and starts to get tough), the new system should be the catalyst for business transformation, something people can reference as the driving force behind positive change. You can have the best consultants, but even skilled, friendly, hard-working people face resistance when they’re the outsiders. Members of groups follow their leaders. And this is a good thing! Huge projects only get accomplished when people work together as a team, which is why executives should be prepared make tough decisions, foster consensus, and drive the project forward.

How executives can play a crucial role

Of the thousands of decisions that need to be made during a project, many are going to be controversial. An ERP system touches almost every department in a company. Each department has its own set of processes and distinct personalities. Something like sales order management — which crosses paths with sales, credit, customer service, planning, logistics, accounts receivable — could require days or weeks of meetings. And when people can’t come to an agreement? The process stalls. This is the death knell of your project. This type of deadlock is why executive support is crucial. They can smooth the path and make the tough decisions needed to drive the project forward.

Why meetings are so important

We recommend you form a project steering committee and meet at least once a month. The meetings don’t have to be long, but they should focus on specific asks for executives, rather than just listing project updates. It’s amazing what you can accomplish in a one-hour meeting. The key is to keep requests concise, limit needless updates, and be clear on who is responsible for what. By bringing a list of short, actionable items to the executive team, you can respect everyone’s time and keep them engaged and involved.

Frequently asked questions

Why is this more important than budgets, applications, platforms, or other resources?

Certainly those factors are important, but we consider executive involvement the backbone of a successful ERP implementation. These projects involve change management, which is never easy and relies on a company’s leaders to see it through.

How can I ensure my executive team’s involvement?

The most basic thing you can do is establish a steering committee and ask key members of the executive team to participate. Getting executives to attend regular meetings might be tough, but a well thought out meeting with an agenda, decisions and next steps will go a long way to keeping them involved. And it will be worth it in the end.

Ultimately, who is responsible for what?

It’s the implementation team’s job to decide who is responsible for what activities, which problems need an executive decision, and which can be solved on their own.

Fitting in another monthly meeting is hard, how do we use the time effectively?

The key to a successful steering committee meeting isn’t just project updates (people can get that information on their own time), it’s bringing up the issues that need executive input. Get in, follow the agenda, assign next steps, and move on.

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Season codes: what are you really tracking?

As the SVP of Global Business Development for Sunrise Technologies, Cem Item serves as a trusted advisor to C-level executives running large global enterprises. He conducts corporate business strategy engagements and digital transformation workshops around the world. With over 20 years of consulting experience, Cem specializes in the textile, apparel, footwear, home furnishings, consumer goods manufacturing, and retail industries.

The importance of seasonal products for brands

Some brands live or die by seasons. We work with a lot of apparel and fashion brands, and seasonal inventory is very common for these companies. Winter coats, summer dresses, that sort of thing. While other types of businesses certainly have a seasonal element, there is tremendous pressure for brands to stay on top of the latest trends (or create trends themselves).

Optimize inventory with season codes

Season codes give you the ability to report on a product’s sales performance by season. This is a good thing. Especially for apparel and fashion brands, the styles of products change from year to year. A style may have one season to prove itself, and if it doesn’t sell well, it’s gone next year. Often, we find companies add the season code to a product’s style number — for example, say you make a dress and call it DressF20.

Embedded season codes in style numbers cause problems

At first glance, combining season codes and style numbers seems fine. It makes logical sense. But over time, keeping these two attributes together causes problems. Let’s examine a few:

Problem 1: If you decide to sell across seasons, you need to create new style numbers for the same product

The dress from Fall 2020 was a big hit. You want to carry it next year. Great! However, you’ll now have to make a DressF21 style and move the 2020 inventory to the new 2021 style number.

Problem 2: Carried-over styles need new color and size product variants

The original dress you sold that was so popular — you also have to make new color and size variants for the carried-over style.

Problem 3: You must complete inventory transfers for the new SKUs.

You’ve got your new style number, your new variants — now it’s time to transfer the leftover inventory from the old SKU to the new SKU. Now imagine doing all this work for 10, 20, 30 styles every season. Think about all the time and effort wasted — all because you’re tracking styles and the season code together.

Last season doesn’t really mean last season (for styles)

Ask yourself: what data are you really trying to capture with the season code? Are you trying to document:

When the product was designed?

When the product was manufactured?

The selling season for the product?

A better way to manage seasonal inventory

You may find a more logical attribute than season, or that there are actually multiple “seasons” that have nothing to do with whether it’s snowing outside or not. Maybe design seasons are the way to go. Another way to think about it is in terms of color. Colors lend themselves to seasonality more than style, so you could link a season code with a color rather than a product. The best way to generate season codes will differ for your business, but being thoughtful about what you really need that data for, and setting it up right the first time, can save time and money down the road (no more frantically keying in new product numbers and inventory transfers).

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What should your product numbers mean?

As a Senior Supply Chain Consultant for Sunrise Technologies, Melissa Welhelmi brings over 20 years of industry experience to the table and serves as a trusted advisor for apparel, footwear, and consumer goods companies that are in the midst of an ERP replacement.

Intelligent product numbers

Like we’ve discussed before, product is the heart of your brand. And since product structure is such an integral part of your business, how you number (or don’t number) those products matter. A lot.

Intelligent numbering is very common in the industries we work with. This is when a product’s number or ID contains meaningful information. For example, a fashion brand might have a jacket label WJF20S123-BLK-S. In the style name, “W” means Women, “J” means Jacket, F20 means Fall 2020 season, S123 means the sequential style number. “BLK” is the color black and “S” stands for small size. The style numbers can get really detailed.

At first, intelligent numbering makes a lot of sense, especially for quick analysis. At a glance, users can see the most important attributes. Especially with companies using legacy inventory management systems, users may rely on those product numbers packed with meaning for reporting and analytics.

Why smart numbering is no longer a best practice

Businesses change. Employees leave and take their institutional knowledge with them. New staff members have to learn and maintain the product numbering schema. Because humans maintain these numbers, mistakes happen. Eventually, you may find that no one understands what your company’s product numbers mean anymore, but you have to maintain it for the sake of not having a better alternative.

In many ways, intelligent numbering is an outdated practice that should be left behind with legacy systems. There are many downsides:

Someone needs to be well-trained and well-versed in the product numbering schema so they can correctly configure products. Mistakes cost time and money to fix.
Heavy reliance on insider knowledge — new staff members don’t know the meaning behind the intelligent numbers.
Hard to maintain — adding new product categories means you might have to rethink the whole data structure and add new, complicated logic.
Adding new products can be time-consuming, with a higher likelihood of manual entry and errors.

Intelligent numbering isn’t just a human problem, it’s a systems problem. Especially for consumer brands, once they start adding new product categories, additional information must be added to the product master data setup. The extra business logic that comes with this work adds another layer of complexity to something as simple as numbering products.

Trade smart numbers for a smarter system

We’ve discussed this in detail in some of our other blogs — there’s a better way!

Business applications today are built to handle multidimensional products without complex naming schemes. Data entities like dimensions, hierarchies, attributes, categories, and assortments can be used to create a new master data model for a company that is easy to maintain, without intelligent number schemes.

Legacy systems often lack this capability, so we understand why organizations struggle with intelligent product numbering.

Why you should ditch smart numbering in your product data management

Easier than intelligent numbering

Adding new products is quick and easy.

Users don’t have to remember extra information about meaning behind product numbers

They can use other dimensions in the ERP system for search and reporting.

No single point of failure (or bottlenecks)

Multiple users can work with products in the system, and they don’t have to ask someone what the numbers mean.

Easy to maintain

Has your brand expanded into dog beds, home furnishings, or hair products? No problem. Configuring new dimensions is easier and faster than rethinking your numbering schema for your entire product catalog.

Improve part or product lifecycle management

If product information changes, the number doesn’t have to.

Easier to merge new product catalogs

Product catalogs from different companies or acquisitions can be merged without losing information.

Ease of reporting

Advanced reporting like data mining, automated queries, and business analytics is easier to do with simple product IDs.

Other considerations for intelligent numbering and ERP systems

A new systems implementation is a complete paradigm shift for your business. Like we discuss in product attributes, an ERP project is an opportunity for you to cleanse your data and setup a new master data structure that works for you. Changing these data entities is a big deal and requires a solid change management strategy.

Analyst Reports: Read what industry experts say about Microsoft cloud solutions

Nucleus Research ERP Technology Value Matrix

The ERP Value Matrix reflects the continued shift to the cloud, with vendors seeing accelerated adoption rates. Microsoft continues in its Leader position with Microsoft Dynamics 365 for Finance and Supply Chain, Enterprise Edition. All the enterprise capabilities in Microsoft Dynamics for Finance and Supply Chain, Enterprise edition are underpinned by Microsoft’s global delivery strategy that includes 36 geographies and over 60 language localizations. Additionally, the Microsoft business application platform delivers capabilities such as Power Apps, Power BI, Power Automate, and the Microsoft Dataverse (formerly Common Data Service), helping customers better collect and analyze their data as well as build applications to automate manual tasks.

Microsoft, A Leader in the Magic Quadrant for Cloud ERP

Product-centric organizations are increasingly adopting cloud ERP platforms to standardize operations and drive intelligent automation. The 2025 Gartner® Magic Quadrant™ recognizes Microsoft as a Leader for its ongoing innovation and proven ability to support scalable, composable transformation across finance and operations.

The Total Economic Impact™ of Microsoft Dynamics Supply Chain

Microsoft Dynamics 365 Supply Chain Management addresses key supply chain challenges. These include limited visibility, adapting to changing customer demands, outdated systems, and disruptions. The solution enhances visibility across the supply chain network, enabling better planning, agility, and asset uptime optimization, ensuring smooth operations even during disruptions. Forrester Consulting conducted a Total Economic Impact™ (TEI) study to assess the potential ROI of deploying Dynamics 365 Supply Chain Management. The investment led to significant benefits, including:

Increased production volume capacity by 10% to 15% due to faster time-to-market.
Enhanced operational efficiency with a 2% to 3% reduction in unplanned machine downtime, worth over $1.5 million over three years and 500 manufacturing machines.
Increased developer productivity by 10% to 50%, reallocating developer time for higher-value tasks.
A 5% boost in revenue attributed to improved product quality, translating to more than $6.8 million in three years.
Infrastructure footprint consolidation of 35% to 65% by shifting from on-premises to cloud solutions, saving close to $11 million over three years.

The Total Economic Impact™ of Microsoft Dynamics Finance

Microsoft commissioned Forrester Consulting to conduct a Total Economic Impact™ (TEI) study and examine the potential return on investment (ROI) enterprises may realize by deploying Microsoft Dynamics 365 Finance. The purpose of this study is to provide readers with a framework to evaluate the potential financial impact of Dynamics 365 Finance on their organizations.

To better understand the benefits, costs, and risks associated with this investment, Forrester interviewed four representatives with experience using Dynamics 365 Finance. For the purposes of this study, Forrester aggregated the interviewees’ experiences and combined the results into a single composite organization that is a retail and wholesale organization with 120 finance personnel and revenue of $750 million per year.

Above Average ROI from Dynamics 365

In analyzing the results of Microsoft Dynamics 365 deployments, Nucleus found that for every dollar spent, companies realized an average of $16.97 in returns. This is significantly higher than the average for both enterprise resource planning (ERP) and customer relationship management (CRM), which deliver, on average, $7.23 and $8.71 respectively. Nucleus found that companies taking advantage of Microsoft’s investments in cloud and usability, as well as integration and analytics, were able to achieve significant returns by increasing productivity and revenues and reducing costs. Microsoft’s integration of business capabilities such as ERP, CRM, and HCM with Office 365, Power BI, Power Platform, and Azure offer even greater value than the industry averages and as Microsoft makes further investments in integration and innovation, customers will benefit from the additional value provided by the cloud platform.

The Total Economic Impact™ of Power Apps

Adopting Power Apps can transform a company’s IT function from a blocker to an enabler. One interviewee in the Forrester Total Economic Impact Study said: “We can now build once and deploy to different places….We can now make changes on the fly and support a very dynamic business.” Benefits included:

74 percent less cost to develop an application
188 percent ROI over 3 years, with a net present value of $6.1 million
Average payback period is less than 6 months

The Digital Commerce Imperative

A staggering seventy-six percent of retail and CPG decision-makers agree that improving digital commerce capabilities is their most urgent business priority. And yet for many organizations running on legacy or disparate systems, this goal is far out of reach. Microsoft commissioned Forrester to evaluate how retail and CPG companies are approaching digital commerce improvements today. In this thought leadership report, read key insights about the state of the retail and CPG industries in a post-pandemic world, and how technology leaders plan to invest to make true unified commerce a reality.

The Total Economic Impact™ Of Microsoft Dynamics 365 For Finance And Operations

Cloud simplicity, gained agility, improved user adoption, and enhanced security were a few of the benefits of Microsoft Dynamics 365 Finance and Operations. The quantitative benefits over a three year period included:

Increased wholesale revenue by 3 percent, retail revenue by 4 percent and decreased excess inventory and shrinkage by 10 percent
Operational efficiencies reduced cost of goods sold by 10 percent and improved gross margin by 2.4 percent
Employee productivity gains reduced shop floor staffing by 6 percent, increased finance productive by 20 percent, and increased sales productivity by 4 percent
Total benefits resulted in a 60 percent ROI and a 20 month payback period, including legacy license, maintenance, hardware, and admin cost avoidance

The Total Economic Impact™ of Microsoft Dynamics Commerce

Dynamics 365 Commerce provides a seamless shopping experience across physical and digital channels. Customers using a network of disparate and inflexible legacy solutions stand to save significant time and money by moving to an integrated omni-channel solution like Commerce. Forrester’s Total Economic Impact study of Dynamics 365 Commerce found:

Improved inventory management to the tune of $3.7 million
Saved $1.9 million through decreased training time
Increased brick and mortar sales by $1.5 million
25 percent eCommerce sales uplift
Payback period of only 17 months

Microsoft Security a Leader in 5 Magic Quadrants

Gartner has named Microsoft Security a Leader in five Magic Quadrants. This is exciting news that we believe speaks to the breadth and depth of our security offerings. Microsoft was identified as a Leader in the following five security areas:

Cloud Access Security Broker (CASB) solutions
Access Management
Enterprise Information Archiving
Unified Endpoint Management (UEM) tools
Endpoint Protection Platforms

The Total Economic Impact™ Of Microsoft Azure IaaS

Microsoft commissioned Forrester Consulting to conduct a study to examine the potential return on investment (ROI) enterprises may realize by shifting some or all their management and operations from on-premises, hosted, and outsourced implementations to Azure’s infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS) offering. Benefits included:

Improved production efficiency
Reduced datacenter, IT resource, and outsourcing costs
Easier and faster software and hardware management (such as patching and support)

A Platform for Today, Tomorrow, and Decades from Now

Microsoft offers a complete platform at a tremendous value. When you consider the billions of dollars invested in research and development, cloud growth, and long term viability, an investment in Microsoft makes long term sense.

Ready to learn more about what Dynamics 365 can do for your business?

Virtual Warehouse

Warehouse data tells a story

Data tells a story about how a company runs its business. The warehouse table in particular — this core entity reveals so much about how a company manages its inventory. We’re fascinated by the creativity we see and how customers utilize their inventory data in so many ways.

A common setup: virtual warehouses

One way customers can manage inventory is by setting up virtual warehouses. This is when a warehouse that doesn’t exist in physical space is created in their inventory management system, and inventory is added. Virtual warehouses are a technique used to segment inventory. Think of it as “setting aside” a portion of your product for VIP customers or certain channels. Virtual warehouses aren’t necessarily a bad thing – if an important customer, region, or channel made an early commitment to your product, you definitely want to make sure that product is available to them. For single-channel brands or businesses with simple supply chains, virtual warehousing is a perfectly fine way to manage inventory, and a good business practice. But for omni-channel brands, or global organizations selling product in multiple countries, using virtual warehouses to segment inventory can cause problems.

How virtual warehouses cause problems in the supply chain

Problems start to happen when you set up dozens of virtual warehouses in the system to serve different channels, regions, and retail stores. Even though the warehouses are virtual, you still must deal with the same inventory management issues that crop up just like in a physical warehouse. There are overages and shortages. Demand fluctuates. Product that you “set aside” for your customers and channels changes, constantly, and now you must keep up with every warehouse you created. Different operational segments of the business may hide inventory from another, so they can ensure their fulfillment requests are met. It’s not uncommon for us to see a single warehouse storing product, yet the ERP system has four separate virtual locations. How can you fulfill orders from warehouses that don’t exist?

Fixes for virtual warehouses – that actually cause more problems

When businesses start to have these problems with virtual warehouses, they come up with a brilliant solution – virtual transfers! These cause their own sets of problems, though. When this happens, you’re moving too far away from the accurate, real-life understanding of your inventory. To fix this, companies ask their IT departments to write specific algorithms to automate these virtual transfers, which eats up more time and money. And all the while, the brand still must keep fulfilling orders and allocating product. What started out as a simple way to make every channel happy becomes a twisted nightmare of complex rules and business logic. There are also third-party solutions you can buy and implement to make virtual warehouse management easier. But at the end of the day, these solutions don’t fix the core problem: your virtual house inventory doesn’t match your physical inventory, and it’s hard for the business to make good decisions regarding fulfillment, allocation, and how to manage the supply chain.

The solution? Get rid of virtual warehouses

There is a solution for this virtual warehouse madness and prioritizing where inventory gets allocated. An intelligent soft allocation system can dramatically improve omni-channel inventory management. Soft allocation does this by pegging inventory to segments based on demand and supply from a single inventory point (aka a single warehouse). Instead of automating virtual transfers just to balance out inventory inaccuracies, soft allocation is configurable as demands change, with no complex rewriting or rules or algorithms. Users can prioritize inventory, while pulling from a single pool and maintaining global visibility across the entire system.

Frequently asked virtual warehouse questions

What's better, hard or soft allocation?

Soft allocation is the way to go. By keeping inventory transparent, you keep the supply chain moving quickly. Solutions can give you the flexibility to hard allocate once you’re ready to ship, but up until that point, you’ll want to be able to move orders around fast, without unnecessary data entry or manual processes.

If virtual warehouses are so problematic, is there still a case to use them?

We don’t consider virtual warehouses a best practice. For one thing, there is nothing fast about virtual warehouses. Once you start messing around with virtual transfers and virtual overages and shortages, you’ve moved too far away from reality, and your users are going to waste a lot of time trying to make your imaginary warehouse look right. At Sunrise, we advocate for having what’s in your system match your physical inventory, sticking as close to reality as possible.

Is this where negative inventory comes from?

Theoretically, yes, although it’s possible to put systems in place to prevent that. Even with extra business logic, though, solving one problem for virtual warehouses won’t fix everything that’s wrong with using them in the first place. Soft allocation prevents negative inventory from ever being an issue.

Why replace virtual warehouses with a soft allocation solution?

If your brand sells across multiple channels like retail, eCommerce, and wholesale, or they sell in multiple regions or countries, soft allocation is the way to go. The more complex an organization, the smarter it is to keep all the inventory in one big pool. It seems counterintuitive at first, but when done correctly, soft allocation ensures you can meet fulfillment demand and have an accurate, real-world view of your inventory across all your channels.

See how Dynamics 365 handles inventory management

Are you interested in learning more inventory best practices? Would you like to a see a modern, streamlined allocation solution that gives you both flexibility and accuracy? Contact Sunrise today!

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To Customize, or Not to Customize?

Table of Contents

Understanding When to Customize Your ERP System

Gap-Fit Analysis: Identifying When Customizations Are Necessary

Strategic Factors to Consider Before Customizing

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Virtual Warehouses Best Practices

Warehouse data tells a story

A common setup: virtual warehouses

How virtual warehouses cause problems in the supply chain

Fixes for virtual warehouses – that actually cause more problems

The solution? Get rid of virtual warehouses

What should
your product numbers mean?