Manifen CIO - Zhang Teng

The bra in modern sense is actually an exotic product. Through the edification and influence of a large number of domestic and foreign brand underwear enterprises, women begin to attach importance to the aesthetics of "inner beauty". Underwear is also gradually associated with fashion, sexy, fashion and other words. However, the trend is always changing and constantly bringing forth new ideas. As a branch of the garment industry, underwear enterprises are also faced with the problems that have to be considered, such as shorter product development cycle, diversified underwear categories and increasing customer selectivity. These problems have brought difficulties to the management and R & D of enterprises.

When Clothes & Accessories Consumption has entered the era of "fast fashion". Facing the changing industry and market environment, many garment enterprises began to be vigilant in peace and danger, actively change and optimize the process, and attach importance to the supply chain construction. In the new upsurge of fashion enterprises' informatization, Manifen group (hereinafter referred to as "Manifen") has begun to carry out information construction step by step to support its huge group organizational structure and internationalization strategy. Though not as dazzling as Lining and America, it may be more meaningful.

　　 Underwear industry faces transformation and upgrading

Originated in Lingnan Town, Chaonan District, Shantou, Guangdong. ManiForm The group is a large specialized brand underwear enterprise group which is prepared to research, produce and sell the whole industrial chain. The company owns three sub underwear market brands, Yves, man, and Lan Zhuoli. More than 1800 self operated counters, 120 self operated stores and 2500 joined customers have been set up throughout the country. Among them, Manifen brand has been named "the first comprehensive market share of similar products" for six consecutive years.

Manifen's information technology started relatively early. If it is counted from the computerization of Finance and the application of single computer, it has gone through more than ten years. After 2001, marketing, inventory management, ERP and so on were implemented. Later, with the company's accurate market positioning, Manifen gradually developed from one brand to three brands, and the management structure developed from the three levels of the head office, the office and the counter to the four level management of the group, branch office and counter. However, at this time, the information technology has not been given enough attention, and has been in a state of stagnation, which is not enough to support the expansion of the organizational structure. This is also a common problem faced by garment enterprises.

Manifen IT director Zhang Teng Have a deep understanding of the industry and its own enterprises. He pointed out that in the past few years, enterprises did not pay enough attention to IT. The clothing industry is an industry with high brand value added, and the profit margin of Brand Company is generally good. When the profit margin of enterprises is relatively high, it will hide many management problems, and the demand for information will not be so strong. "With the change of consumer demand, the improvement of people's living standards and tastes, the competition in the underwear market is becoming more and more intense. Enterprises are aware of the sharp decline in gross margins of products, the large number of stocks are eroding their profits, and the overall profit situation is decreasing. They will begin to focus on internal management, attach importance to information technology, and seek to improve traditional business processes, working methods and business models through informatization, in order to curb and reverse the trend of profit decline."

The shortage of stock and terminal shortage constitute a difficult problem for many garment enterprises. With the increasing demand for personalized consumers, it is more and more difficult for us to grasp the demand in the early stage. Zhang Teng frankly said, "as the company's sales growth, inventory is also growing rapidly, but at the same time, the terminal feedback information is out of stock. The reason is that the consumer demand is not well grasped in the early stage. "This structural contradiction will lead to a vicious circle, which will lead to a continuous discount on the sales mode of enterprises. This deviates from the original intention of developing new products. All enterprises want to sell products as soon as possible when designing and developing new products, so as to maximize profits. "

　　 SAP as the core information infrastructure platform

Since 2007, Manifen's commitment to becoming an underwear leader has become increasingly clear. In order to support multi brand business strategy, multi-level organizational structure, and the large-scale and efficient operation of the terminal network, Manifen formulated the IT plan for the next 3-5 years. "We hope that through 3-5 years, people, money and goods involved in the company will be managed on a unified information platform. Realize the visualization and digitalization of all management processes and business results. IT planning will implement annual revision, and adjust the information input according to the development goals and management requirements of the company. Zhang Teng said. Only the entire group can use a unified language on the same information platform to communicate smoothly and make decisions effectively.

Zhang Teng believes that enterprise information construction should include three systems. A set of core business level systems, including ERP, terminal POS systems, manufacturing systems, PLM, CRM and so on. Manifen's industrial chain is very long, covering all links from design, research and development, manufacturing, logistics to terminal sales, and effective management of these core businesses can provide value-added services to consumers. One is supporting systems, supporting and serving core business systems, such as OA, Email, process management, knowledge management, BI and so on. Another is a tool system, including network, anti-virus, encryption, storage, backup and so on. So long as the three systems can be organized and coordinated well, the information system construction of enterprises is relatively complete and effective.

How to collect the needs of front-end consumers, so that the whole supply chain can "suit the remedy to the case" is a matter of great concern to Manifen. In the 09 year, Manifen began to implement PLM. With this system, Manifen realized the process management from collecting customer needs, transforming customer needs into product requirements, improving planning capabilities and strengthening product development, in order to drive and improve the delivery capabilities of all aspects of Manifen supply chain.

Talking about the effect of SAP implementation, Zhang Teng is endless. "Implementing SAP means that every enterprise is not only a set of software systems on line, but SAP includes many core business processes, which will bring about a revolution in the internal management of the whole enterprise." With the implementation of SAP, Manifen spent a lot of time in the early stage, and reorganized the whole company's process and process rules from organization and process. To redefine our business and redefine our responsibilities, including the division of responsibilities for everything, the process and rules of process operation, are effectively resolved.

SAP is a system of financial and business integration. Before that, there were many different business and financial systems, and it took more than 10 days to complete the financial statements at the end of each month. Now it only takes 2 days, and the financial staff can make more time to do other more valuable things. At least, it can be seen very intuitively that efficiency is the saving of labor costs.

Zhang Teng also pointed out that SAP's promotion of inventory management and product flow efficiency is also very obvious. Manifen has 10 distribution centers throughout the country, serving more than 1800 terminals and nearly 2000 joining clients. "Based on the unified SAP platform, Manifen's product scheduling capability has been significantly improved. Due to uneven development in all parts of the country, product sales will also be unbalanced, and products will always flow to the most efficient places. After nearly half a year's on-line operation, the efficiency of inventory turnover has increased by nearly 50%, and clear figures have also been recognized by management.

　　 Improving the response speed of supply chain

On the one hand, garment enterprises are facing high inventory. On the one hand, the root cause of the double embarrassment of terminal shortage is the slow response of the supply chain. "In garment enterprises, it is no longer a factory, a courtyard, a wall. Today, the reaction speed of the supply chain is too important for enterprises." Zhang Teng felt very touched. There is no doubt that building a fast response supply chain system has become the key to win the garment industry.

"The supply chain of underwear enterprises is very long. A complete supply chain should start with discovering the needs of consumers, and eventually completing services for consumers. It covers the understanding and mining of the needs of consumers, transforming the needs of consumers into product needs, transforming product requirements into design requirements, and then entering into product planning, design, manufacturing, logistics and sales, so that consumers can get satisfactory products and services. This long supply chain is also quoted by Zhang Teng as a joke. "The links involved in making underwear are as complicated as making aircraft."

In Zhang Teng's view, capturing consumer demand is fundamental. A large number of garment enterprises are making efforts to improve the back-end, strive to increase production capacity, improve design and development efficiency, and improve the efficiency of logistics distribution. However, we must be clear that all the work at the back end of the supply chain is based on accurate consumer demand. If consumers do not agree, then no matter how much labor and cost the enterprise has invested, it can only be an inefficient supply chain. Analyzing and sorting out the needs of consumers is a long-term process, which requires the persistence and devotion of enterprises.

The obvious feature of the clothing industry is that the homogeneous color code is conducive to the sale and display of terminals. The lack of color codes will have a great impact on sales, which depends on the centralized control and distribution of resources. Manifen will disperse all more than 60 small warehouses across the country, and replace them with 10 distribution centers to serve more than 1800 terminals and more than 1000 customers across the country, shortening the level of the supply chain, realizing centralized management of resources, and appropriately concentrating in the future.

Manifen also optimized the supply chain of the supply chain according to the characteristics of the distribution of the stores. The distribution center was built in Southern China, East China, Shandong, Northeast China, Xi'an and other places according to the radiating radius. Manifen's supply chain has basically formed a closed loop at some points. Through terminal, Internet and PLM system docking, it is easy to collect customer needs and become product development needs. "PLM, logistics distribution, terminal retail system has been completed, and the bad factories have not yet been cut in. From the internal level, from customers to customers has formed a closed loop.

Planning is also an important factor in shortening the supply chain cycle. Many enterprises have relatively rough plans, such as annual and monthly plans. "The reason why the supply chain is always busy is the poor planning. Manifen can now achieve the weekly plan and hope to refine the next step."

　　 Explore new e-business mode

With the increasing matching of consumers' shopping habits and logistics, e-commerce has also become a business mode for traditional clothing enterprises to test water. However, some people think that e-commerce is only an extension and supplement of traditional channels. Some people think that e-commerce is transforming the traditional clothing industry. It is easy to find Manifen's three flagship stores in Taobao mall. Obviously, this is just a grope for Manifen, not a final model.

Zhang Teng is optimistic about e-commerce. He believes that information technology has brought new communication mode between enterprises and customers, making brand promotion, acquisition of consumer demand and internal work processes changing. He stressed that traditional enterprises and e-commerce will be a concept in the future, and the essence is to get consumers and provide services and values to them. Just because traditional business still occupies the market share of absolute advantage, the two party will be differentiated. "Maybe the future business model will change. Maybe traditional business is just for leisure and experience."

Zhang Teng has a high degree of interest in e-commerce. If an enterprise wants to develop electronic commerce, it must have excellent information platform to connect with Internet applications if it wants to be bigger and stronger. Otherwise, we can not undertake this market. At present, Manifen has organized a special team to carry out research and attempt on e-commerce.