A New Way to Approach Product Specs: A White Paper

By David Matsil, nvision Technologies, Inc.
March 2002

Introduction

Historically, Textile and Apparel Specifications have been done one of three ways: (1) By hand: cut and paste, photocopy, fudging, then faxing or overnighting the documents overseas. (2) On computer using many different programs (such as Excel, Illustrator, Freehand, then faxing or overnighting the documents overseas, or (3) using one of the many commercial spec (Product Data Management or PDM) programs on the market.

If these PDM systems fit your workflow, then they represent good solutions. However, if they do not fit your workflow, I submit that you ought to consider other options.

I would like to discuss two, each of which can be used exclusively. Together they represent a powerful and effective alternative to the traditional methods. The first is custom developed databases, the second is electronic paper.

Why Custom Develop?

Put yourself, for the moment, in the shoes of a software company that is producing a commercial product for a specific industry. In order to be successful, they must meet the needs of the industry generally and not the needs of a specific company; this means that the ‘feature-set’ that they build in must work universally. This in turn means that there will be many specific features that will not be incorporated because they would only have appeal and use to a few companies. (The cost of including those features would far outweigh the benefits (potential sales) so they will, by necessity, be excluded). The end result is a product that will meet the needs of the many but not the few and which will ‘force’ the users to adopt some business practices and methodology that they don’t want to. Typically speaking, the company will also be unwilling to do any custom work to change the software for a specific client and, if they are willing to do this, the fees for doing so will likely be enormous.

The second alternative is to develop the solution in-house; after all who knows your business better than you! While this can be done, and many companies do it, this is, rarely, a really good solution to the problem. There are many reasons why this is so! Firstly, resources are generally limited and whoever is given the project will likely have other ‘jobs’ that they have to do, thus the development cycle will be considerably longer than a person working full time on the project. Secondly, generally most in-house programs are developed by a staff member who does not have the technical expertise to build a such a solution. The end result will almost never work completely satisfactorily and, because of the ‘design errors’ made, it will often be totally impossible to get it to work right without going back to the beginning and starting over. Finally and most importantly: it takes the in house person, and all the resources necessary to support the project, away from what they were hired to do in the first place. Historically, most companies that develop their own in-house solution reach the “we can’t go any further!” point within a year or two and then bring in a custom development house to ‘finish’ it off. It is almost always going to be quicker and better to start over and do the whole thing properly. So all the time, effort, agony and resources that have been expended along the way are going to be, at least partially, wasted!

The custom development house or developer starts from a different viewpoint. That is what do you, the client, need to do in your business. The solution is built from the ground up with the client’s needs being fulfilled and the ‘operational changes’ being minimized so that, for the most part, things are done the way you are used to doing them; the only difference being that they are far more automated and require far less time to do. The solution is also designed so that it can easily be changed as business needs change and the only limitations to those changes are the time and cost involved of doing so.

What are the advantages and disadvantages of using a custom development house? The advantages are numerous: speed of development, total integration and scalability, flexibility and a feature set that is exactly what the client needs without any compromises. The disadvantage is, quite simply, the cost! But is it? If you take into account the number of hours that you are ‘wasting’ each week by not having a solution that does most of the work for you; the resources that you are utilizing in areas that are not generating revenue; the time taken to get information (reports) that allow management to really understand what it going on in the business and to then eliminate or correct areas that are ‘problematic’, then you will most likely find that a custom program is the right solution for you. It is also a one-time, fully tax deductible cost which will add value to your business because it will make your business more efficient and, thus, more profitable!

Apparel and textile reps have had databases for years to facilitate the tracking of customers, commissions, styles, sizes, colors, and fabrics. These databases have been complete order entry and sales commission tracking for multiple divisions, mills/factories and salespeople and handled many order terms such as factoring and tracked payments. As opposed to ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning)-type systems, these have been affordably priced and easy to implement. Even larger companies have had databases developed to manage a piece of the workflow, such as Purchase Orders to the Orient, while integrating that data with their mainframe systems. Counter intuitive as it may seem, it is often it is easier and less expensive to introduce a separately developed database to do such a function. And it can get done “under the radar” so a solution can be implemented before a similar system would even be specified by a large, multi-departmental committee!

Today, these databases can be integrated with web sites, image management software, word processors, spreadsheets and e-mail. So why have a customized spec system created for your business? Each company works so differently, it is the ideal way to automate that process and shorten the lead-time needed for that workflow.

What is ePaper and why use it?

ePaper is electronic paper. Its paradigm is physical paper, but it is so much better.

Imagine yourself creating a “portable document” – that is one that can be read by anyone who has a computer anywhere in the world. Creating this document, say a spec sheet or a spec package, is no more difficult and takes no more time than printing it. And, one document can be created from any and many programs: Word, Excel, PhotoShop, Illustrator, and CAD systems to name a few. What is more, the text in the document is searchable. Did you know that 7.5% percent of paper documents get lost completely? Or that executives spend as much as three hours every week looking for missing information, even though the average document is copied 19 times and 200 million pieces of paper are filed away each day?

This electronic paper can be sent in seconds, and received anywhere around the world almost instantly. It is can viewed be in full color with sharp text and graphics. Can you do that with your fax machine?

The documents are portable in another way. You can fit up to 170,000 single spaced, double-sided pages worth on these documents on a single CD. That amount of paper would weigh 1,700 pounds. Which would you rather take to the Orient?

And these documents are secure. You could create a document that cannot be printed by the person who receives it, that cannot be copied, that cannot even be opened without a password. You can even sign the document in a secure fashion!

If all this was not amazing enough, these documents could be collaborated on over the Internet and could be connected to databases such as the ones I described earlier in this Paper.

So, if some of these huge commercial PDM systems are too expensive or too cumbersome, I would urge you to consider the aforementioned alternatives.

We at nvision create customized databases and ePaper solutions in addition to providing hardware and networking support and web site development. We have over 40 years of experience in the apparel, textile and home furnishing industries. If these notions intrigue you, please do contact us at 212.239.0099 or e-mail us at sales@nvision-tech.com.