SilverBlaze and IBM Help Picadilly Fashions Boost Sales

HostReview.com
Friday, December 23, 2005; 12:00 PM

SilverBlaze Solutions and IBM today announced that Picadilly Fashions has transformed its business operations into a successful business to business enterprise by implementing an automated supply chain management system. As a result of the new system, Picadilly Fashions has seen a 25 percent uptake in sales and a 60 percent increase in order processing time.

Built on IBM's open standards technology, the SilverBlaze and IBM solution deliver the highest levels of service, by processing orders around-the-clock for its global customer base. The joint solution is connected to the company's back-end applications that manage inventory, customer order and credit history and product pricing. This tight back-end integration ensures that the right products -- drawn from an inventory of 10,000 styles -- are shipped to the right customers at the right time.

Moving from a manual to an automated system, Picadilly Fashions has cut order-processing time from an average of 15 minutes to less than 5 minutes by moving to an online model.

As a global supplier of women's apparel to retailers in the United States of America, the United Kingdom, Italy, France and more, Picadilly Fashions is a small-to-medium business with less than 200 employees.

In addition to improving the customer buying experience, the Silverblaze and IBM solution will help Picadilly Fashions employ new marketing and advertising techniques to explore new markets.

"Our investment in the open and integrated SilverBlaze and IBM solution has given us the tools to become a more flexible and responsive on-demand business," said XXX of Picadilly Fashions.

Picadilly Fashions adopted SilverBlaze's CAPRICORN module for Catalogue Ordering, combined with IBM's WebSphere Application Server Express 5.0* and DB2 Universal Database Express 8.1 for Linux* platforms.

As one of Canada's most successful apparel manufacturers, Picadilly Fashions has grown from a company of 15 employees to a thriving manufacturing operation with more than 200 people within the past 20 years.

"Picadilly Fashions is a good example of how a company can transform itself into a powerful e-business entity by making a strategic technology investment," said Dan Mair, director of e-business solutions, SilverBlaze Solutions.

SilverBlaze Solutions is an IBM Premier Business Partner and a member of IBM's PartnerWorld Industry Networks program.

With 80 years of leadership in helping businesses innovate, IBM is the world's largest information technology company. IBM is a leading provider of e-business solutions and is dedicated to helping companies, business partners and developers leverage the potential of the Internet and network computing across a wide range of businesses and industries.

SilverBlaze Solutions provides small and medium business (SMB) customers affordable and responsive on demand business solutions. Headquartered in Richmond Hill, Ontario, SilverBlaze Solutions provides IBM WebSphere and Lotus Domino-based e-business solutions, as well as consulting and development services, to organizations throughout North America.