Craig Crawford on Mobile Connectivity

I think there are a number of trends in technology. It's moving so fast and it has been moving so quickly in recent years since the development really of the iPad and the iPhone, which really isn't that long ago. We're seeing a lot of momentum, location-based technology for example, so giving the retailers and brands an opportunity to have a dialogue with customers when they're near a store or when they're in a store. And so that's very different. And that's a challenge, I think, for brands because it means having a real conversation with your customer digitally. It doesn't replace the sales associate working with you, but it certainly allows you to engage more with the consumer when they're nearby. To get them to come by the store, and it also gives the consumer an opportunity to talk to you one-to-one. So I think that's one big trend. I think another very important trend is just the continued use of mobile devices. We're more and more connected with brands, with each other, and I think that we're gonna see more of that in the workplace. I think digital on the inside has probably been less aggressive, if you will, as digital on the outside. It's made more sense to put mobile devices in stores and to work more closely with the consumer because that's where the transaction happens. But we're at a point in time now where our workers are, are coming into the workplace used to mobile devices for every aspect of their lives, and then they put those away and go to work in a non-mobile, non-agile way. And that, I think, is a big trend that's going to happen very, very, very soon. And it will, in fact, it is starting. Both of these are starting. When you're able to engage with your workplace through mobility at any time through any screen, it enhances productivity. There's a fine line between doing emails at 1 in the morning, which I've done, because sometimes that's the only time we have to actually sit down for a moment and catch up on a few things. But I think the ability to handle and manage problems and issues as they happen, it's very dynamic. Think about a store manager, for example, with wearable technology, the ability to know when new product is on, in the warehouse, product that you've been waiting for, product that's already high in demand, a notification like that, terribly important for productivity because you can immediately get on the floor rather than putting it through the normal tagging and ticketing processes. Think as well, a high net worth individual or a very valuable client coming into a store, and again, wearable technology alerting the sales associate or the manager that that person is now in store so that they're immediately looked after. We're quite rich in data now on who our customers are and how they interact with us as a brand. And what mobile devices allow us to do is act upon that knowledge and bring that to the storefront. But I also think when you look at employees who are out in the field, so I specifically am coming from the luxury retail and fashion space, a lot of decisions are made on the, in a factory floor, at a textile mill, during a fit session. And all of those things are not places that a computer is just sitting waiting for someone to use. And even if it were there, it's quite difficult to sort of type and do data-hungry information and inputting when you're in the middle of, say, a dynamic fit session and you're trying to get, you know, a pleat right on a blouse or something. So using photographs, being able to attach those very quickly to a system via your mobile device is tremendously important. And the more efficient we are, then, and the less administrative work we have to do, then we actually use our brains for thinking and we use our brains to make decisions rather than be a bit numb at a desktop, which can often happen. And I think, you know, in turn will find people not only more productive, but making better decisions and a better balance between work and home life. I am a firm believer that PLM can be truly mobile. It has its challenges, of course. PLM is data hungry and it always will be, and I think that's been one of the biggest challenges for penetration of PLM throughout all organizations, really. It tends to become the job of a few people and everyone else sort of feeds it in. There are a few vendors now who have gone on this sort of connected screen mobile digital journey with PLM. I know of one that has at least 6 iPad apps and 3 or 4 iPhone apps all tying back in. Um, and, and there are a few other vendors that don't have as many, but again, uh, very similar, um, allowing you to do everything from capture inspiration to, uh, audit factories to fit sessions, um, to mock up challenges that you have in a fit session, um, as well as put data in. And the beauty of this then is you've got the device right with you, um, at the point in time where decisions are being made, so you don't capture information on a notebook or or capture it in a Word document, and then try to get back to your desk and make sense of it and put it into the PLM system. I think we're going to go beyond mobility. I think we're going to find ourselves very much in sort of that Minority Report way. And in fact, I've seen some prototypes where using touchscreen technology in meeting rooms, and then using multi-screen technology receiving that data. So it actually goes from that meeting room, and then it's pushed directly out to the phone as decisions are made on that screen. So that if you are in merchandising, you get the information that you need to act upon now, and you go away. If you're in product development, the decisions made in that room, that data goes directly to your phone. And in essence then, we will be using multi-screen technology to make decisions. Right now we're doing that, but we just sort of do it with old-fashioned ways, with paper dolls and storyboards that people carry away and notebooks people write information down and then they have to go sit in front of a desktop. And that, I don't think employees are going to put up with for much longer, to be honest with you. So I am a firm believer that it will be there, and I think it will be there sooner than we really expect it to. Well, I think I probably talked a little bit about productivity and performance in terms of mobility. I think the real The real thing here is how does it improve profit? If everyone understands, and this is really what PLM is supposed to do, everyone sees one version of the truth. We don't always see that now, and part of it is because there is an issue just with updating it and the time it takes to perhaps update PLM systems. People tend to make the decisions first, communicate out to their vendors or their manufacturing partners, or if they are vertically integrated, their internal manufacturing partners, and then go back and update everyone else later. Oftentimes, a lag in an update does affect the cost of product and product development. If you make decisions in a meeting and later find out that your margin's lower and you haven't communicated that out to everyone, then it, it could very well change whether you continue with the style or whether you continue with that decision that you made. I know that was sort of a roundabout way of saying it, but in essence, if you're doing things on a mobile device within a meeting and everyone sees what decisions and changes are being made, even those people not in that meeting, then they're able to protect the cost of that product, the profit margin, um, and plan accordingly. Design is collaborative. People don't design in— unless it's art, unless— we're talking about commercial product here. Even if it is couture runway product, it's still produced to enhance a brand and to make a profit. So it is a commercial product, and therefore it's a collaborative process. Depending upon your structure, it could be a collaborative process all internal and vertical, but still it's collaborative. More often, I think, it's more external and collaborative with partners. So the ability to use mobile devices when you're visiting, visiting factories, when you're working with Mills, allows you to communicate back to the people that need to know what's happening in real time back at your corporate headquarters or your design offices. And that And it carries all the way through to market as well. I mean, even market, if you're in the wholesale business, market is, market week is very much collaborative. You're working with your supply chain, you're looking at minimums, you're also looking at stores' minimums and stores' maximum open to buy, and then usually your replenishment product and how that fits into that. And quite frankly, the same is true even when you are more of a retail-owned operation or an online-owned operation. So having these tools in real time to be able to understand whether minimums are met as market's happening, whether you've met minimums for fabric requirements, depending upon what your manufacturing model is, it's collaborative all the way. And I think the only way we can remain competitive as a brand is to really have real-time information. What tends to happen today is people tend to put these things in systems. They tend to use spreadsheets to to figure out where they are. And there's always a pretty good margin of error, because if everyone's working on a different spreadsheet, then you don't really know the end picture. And so there's usually a bit of number crunching and consolidation in that collaborative process at the end, because we're not using mobile devices to feed into one big database to help us then get one picture of where we are. Digital is a journey, it's not a project. And I think that the most important thing that any company can do is really, with its thought leadership team, figure out what the strategy is for the company in terms of mobility internally and externally. From both perspectives, infrastructure is terribly important. Your Wi-Fi connectivity. We spend so much time looking at networks and wired connections. Now we need to be looking at untethered connections and making sure that's robust enough for people to work in a store, robust enough for people to work within the corporate headquarters. I also think empowering people to have mobile devices, whether that's budgeting for them and providing them for employees— and some companies prefer to do that and manage them from a security from a security perspective through mobile device management tools to keep them as corporate tools. Other companies prefer to allow you to bring your own device to work. Again, both of those require strategy, and both of those require, well, funding, quite frankly, and how a brand is going to use those. Some of the brands that I've worked with have given mobile devices out both internally and in stores in order to stimulate thought, in order to stimulate thought leadership, and to get people to really think how they could possibly use the devices beyond what the roadmap that's laid out is planned to do. I think those are probably two of the, two of the things. I think from a human resource perspective, you need to think about what does this mean when people have the potential to be connected 24/7, or at least beyond the walls of the office and making sure that that environment is appropriate and we're not having— expecting people to answer emails every 15 minutes well into the night. So I think those are the sorts of things that companies need to think about as well because employees will be more likely to look at things, particularly in a global environment where time zones are so different. So if you're based in New York, or you're based in Europe and you're manufacturing in Asia, then you're going to have different time zones and you'll have questions coming from Asia after hours. And how do you respond? And how do you act around those? So that people aren't constantly connected, because that's not the purpose of having that. And then I think just lead by example. I think management needs to work on mobile devices. Look at the challenges and understand it, or understand those challenges. The more they are engaged, the more they will be in tune with the workforce. I work with a nonprofit organization that puts curriculum into schools teaching kids how to write code and build apps. And 10-year-olds today are building apps. 10-year-olds today in, you know, what, some instances, 8, 9 years will be in the office, and what then are they expecting? And so we need to be thinking about that now. We can't wait for that moment to happen and then try to scramble and play catch-up. I think the role of the IT department's changed significantly and will continue to evolve. It needs to be more agile and needs to be more in tune with what consumers are doing, and that influences how brands behave. With consumers, but it also should influence, and I think it does to some extent, and it's starting to influence how brands behave with their employees and how employees engage with the brand. And so providing them with portals, collaborative platforms, and mobile tools and tools like mobile PLM will ultimately result— I really do believe ultimately result in higher profit, better product, better collaboration. But it's not something you can do without thinking about it and putting a program around it and helping people and giving people a place to go. So, a bit of change management, bit of thought leadership, and investment in infrastructure.