Sourcing in the apparel and footwear space is a monumental task and the costing of thousands of products each season, spanning multiple categories (often across multiple brands) with multiple agents and factories around the world, increases the difficulty to effectively manage this key component. Costing has a significant effect on net margin, total store sales, inventory levels, sell-through, and shopper satisfaction. If that isn't enough to keep you up at night think of the competitive impact it has too when consumer dollars are so scarce.

Sourcing teams need to choose their suppliers based on pricing and performance. The complexity of this process is simplified by connecting all of the parties and consolidating the product, supplier and costing information into a single solution. At this point in the process, sourcing teams need to determine estimated costing for each style.

Unifying this information with an established process, the Source module provides an online costing tool that will enable better buying decisions that have a bottom line effect on margins, time to market and product quality.

With all of this complete, the adopted plan can move ahead to the next step in the process using the Order module.