Fashion is an industry constantly in flux, driven by rapidly changing trends not just on the runway but in supply chain operations, economic volatility, and fluctuating consumer demands.

ERP solutions are essential to unifying operations and embedding agility and visibility into business processes to tackle such disruptions.

Yet, so few choices on the market support the nuances of fashion.

Brands often produce hundreds of thousands of SKUs per season, leading to headaches in product development and inventory management, issues that most ERP systems cannot resolve.

The K3 Fashion Portfolio intimately understands the needs of brands and develops solutions to eliminate manual processes to free up time for businesses to focus on more strategic and creative endeavours.

For instance, our matrix functionality enables brands to quickly create and maintain their products with all their associated colour, size, and fit variants to resolve the aforementioned SKU issue.

With fully embedded code in the Dynamics 365 technical landscape, K3 transforms Microsoft’s ERPs into robust, powerhouse solutions that empower brands to handle their operations from concept to consumer.

Seamlessly Integrated Operations

K3's North Star falls exclusively to fashion and apparel, which is why the portfolio's solutions are embedded in Microsoft, allowing our developers to focus strictly on creating functionality to solve industry challenges.

This presents innumerable benefits for brands, as they can utilise D365's comprehensive set of integrations with other Microsoft solutions – like CRM, Teams, Office 365, Power BI, Dataverse and Copilot.

Together, these solutions combine to give brands a complete toolkit for handling all core business operations from sales and marketing to customer service, ensuring that all data flows into a central location for increased visibility and actionable insights.

For example, brands can utilise data captured in their CRM system about their customers to equip their sales team with relevant insights to help foster stronger relationships with shoppers via targeted and personalised interactions.

Or, they can use Teams to quickly communicate between the warehouse and shop floor to check if certain products are in stock for customers in real time.

The key point is that data from all these solutions will be kept in a single place to ensure data integrity.

Endorsed by Leaders, Driven by Innovation

The decision to embed K3's solutions into D365 was spurred by Microsoft being the leading ERP provider for businesses in all industries, a sentiment backed by top advisors like Gartner and Forbes.

Earlier this year, Forbes Advisor reviewed D365 and gave it five stars, noting that it has a variety of applications designed to support all functions, including sales, marketing, customer service, finance, supply chain and HR, in a centralised location.

Forbes also highlighted D365 Business Central as the best overall ERP system last year, while Gartner positioned D365 as a Leader in its Magic Quadrant for Cloud ERP for Product-Centric Enterprises.

Evidently, D365 reigns supreme in the ERP market and as Microsoft’s only Global Independent Software Vendor with fully embedded code for fashion and apparel, it is clear to see we represent the best choice for brands globally.

Driving Tangible Change with AI

If that was not enough, both D365 and K3 are equipped to leverage advanced AI tools and analytics to streamline operational efficiency and deliver competitive advantages.

D365’s integrations with tools like Power BI and Copilot enable the automation of routine tasks, like creating reports on what products are performing well in a season, freeing up valuable resources for brands to focus on innovation and growth.

Meanwhile, K3 recently unveiled its AI-enabled product description generator feature, which allows brands to quickly and effortlessly create descriptions for items.

This tool is a huge time saver when considering the sheer volume of products that are sold online at any given time.

Why Brands are Switching to D365 and K3

While economic conditions continue to hinder investments for many companies, brands are still adopting D365 and K3 as their chosen ERP solution to avoid the pitfalls of outdated, clunky, and fragmented software landscapes.

Such solutions result in costly maintenance and inefficiencies that are harmful in the long term, while a best-in-suite product like K3 and D365 reduces overheads to provide brands with a deflationary platform that can reduce costs even during periods of inflation.

This is a topic, which, much like Microsoft, we like to call “doing more with less”, that we have covered before and encourage you to read more about.

Crucially, K3 and Microsoft’s potent combination places brands in a position of strength, offering a scalable foundation to enable growth.

Join the Fashion ERP Revolution

We realise it is far too easy for us to sing our praises, so we would like to conclude by highlighting a testimonial from Tobias Schuhmacher, Head of IT at Creation Gross:

“My advice to other fashion companies considering K3? It’s a smart move. You’re not just buying a solution – you’re joining a collective that’s shaping the future of fashion technology. Together, we are stronger and with K3, we can push the boundaries of what’s possible in our industry.”

Interested in hearing more about how K3 and D365 can support your brand? Feel free to drop us a line today.