The Role of Process Automation in Transforming the Retail Fashion Industry
Canada’s retail fashion industry boasts glowing prospects for the coming years. Made in CA valued it at over $40 billion in 2024, adding that the local retail market can expect to grow at an annual rate of 2.5% throughout the rest of the decade.
Of course, these forecasts aren’t guaranteed. To truly reap the growth promised by market analysts, fashion retailers need to handily manage the challenges posed by dynamic market conditions and consumer preferences. Even leading Canadian retailers aren’t immune to those obstacles, with Aritzia exemplifying how these factors can affect your bottom line.
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In late March, stocks for the women’s clothing brand experienced a drop of over 22.5%. The trend was primarily caused by global supply chain disruptions affecting inventory management, raising costs, and delaying order fulfillment, affecting Aritzia’s customer experiences and overall sales. According to Yahoo! Finance, it was only able to maintain year-on-year growth thanks to its expansion to the US, and not due to the income generated in its home market here in Canada.
That’s why fashion retailers need to be adaptable. Integrating business process automation tools can particularly help them clear the challenges posed by recent, industry-wide developments like supply chain disruptions. That’s because process automation can play a significant role in transforming the retail fashion industry - by simply making operations more sustainable.
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Process automation can be particularly beneficial for order fulfillment, especially for brands that carry a number of products and get overwhelmed during peak seasons like the holidays. However, it can similarly benefit fashion retailers amid supply chain disruptions due to its ability to automate traditionally manual tasks and improve their accuracy, allowing brands to cut costs while simultaneously preventing delays that negatively impact the customer experience. That’s clearly seen in the features offered by Artsyl OrderAction, which streamlines order fulfillment by accurately capturing data from order entries, automating approval workflows, and providing real-time order tracking. Other tools provide similar benefits for inventory and supply chain management to create a seamless, end-to-end solution.
Because such features can speed up order fulfillment while minimizing human errors that lead to returns and refunds, it’s clear why major retailers like ASOS have leveraged process automation to transform their operations. This leading brand, which specializes in fast fashion and cosmetics, leverages it to automate invoice processing from both customers and suppliers and more intelligently manage its inventory, allowing it to secure the necessary products to meet demand and distribute them accurately as soon as orders come in. Process automation has also helped ASOS predict its inventory needs in the short and long term, facilitating product availability across a wide range of fashion items, even amid ongoing supply chain disruptions.
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Scalability is one of the biggest keys to success in fashion retail, whether brands are looking to open more physical locations or launch websites that help them ship products outside their home countries. However, Aritzia’s recent struggles show that expanding also means having to manage core business functions in more locations, which can complicate operations and create inconsistent customer experiences across different markets - especially amid global supply chain disruptions. That’s why all-in-one solutions like SYSPRO ERP offer businesses the ability to automate and manage inventory, orders, finances, customer relationships, and more alongside multi-location and multi-currency support.
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These features have helped many brands in retail fashion simplify multi-location operations. In particular, it’s aided the Texas-based Eyebuydirect in expanding without compromising customer experiences. It currently sells own-brand prescription glasses, as well as models from designer names like Ray-Ban and Oakley that appeal to specs-wearing and style-savvy consumers across the US and Canada. The products are supplemented by additional services, including virtual glasses try-ons. Process automation tools with multi-location support features help it consistently do so across markets. Eyebuydirect also uses specific process automation software for open-source development, which allows it to add the necessary features to its sites that ensure its customers get the same easy and convenient shopping experiences as well as the same quality products - despite the different logistics involved in accepting and fulfilling orders throughout North America.
For retailers dealing with high order volumes, OrderAction reduces backlogs and human errors by capturing and validating incoming sales orders in real time.
Perhaps more importantly, process automation transforms retail fashion by giving it the data-driven insights it needs to improve performance, even amid changes in market conditions and customer demands. In particular, AI-powered process automation tools can quite literally (and automatically) transform raw data into actionable insights, with the likes of Microsoft BI being particularly popular among businesses for that reason.
Recommended reading: Optimizing Invoice Processing in the Retail Industry: Streamlining Operations with Automation and Efficiency
In fact, process automation’s benefits for data analytics are why the popular fashion brand Levi’s decided to broaden its digital transformation strategy. Last year, it decided to go beyond simply using automated robots in production by integrating process automation across its entire enterprise. Through its dedicated Business Process Automation Center of Excellence team, it began focusing on improving the quality of the data captured by process automation tools so it could enhance data analytics and visualization. The move allowed Levi’s to plan ahead and open three new stores in Canada alone before the 2024 holiday season, just a month after Chain Store Age reported on its new data analytics strategy. That means the brand can easily meet the demand for its designer denim apparel - which customers can even buy through the personalized stylist services Levi’s now offers in the over 50 locations it operates across the country - throughout the year.
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