BECKINGTON and DAVENTRY, UK, Dec 7, 2023 – SEA has awarded a contract to Razorleaf Corp. Ltd to be the implementation partner for Aras Innovator, Aras’ next generation product lifecycle management (PLM) platform. Razorleaf was selected for its long-standing expertise and relationship working with Aras and Aras Innovator since 2008 when the flexible, open-source PLM platform was launched.

Ancilia Trainable Decoy Launcher – SEA’s high-performance countermeasure system that provides rapid threat response to incoming air, surface, or subsurface threats. Image courtesy SEA

The core functionality of the Aras platform is to provide a single digital thread through all SEA products, from conception and requirements through to delivery and beyond. SEA will work collaboratively with Razorleaf Corp. to roll out this PLM platform over the next 18 months.

“Continued delivery excellence to our people at SEA, our customers and our partners is at the core of what we do,” said James Stevens, head of discipline for Systems Engineering at SEA. “Implementing Aras Innovator will provide a more reliable, consistent, and streamlined set of quality and engineering evidence, available in a central, digital location.”

KraitArray is a low profile, miniaturized acoustic array used for anti-submarine warfare (ASW), providing exceptional sensing performance for crewed and uncrewed vessels of all sizes. Image courtesy SEA

Aras Innovator is a flexible, open PLM system that brings recognized best practices into business processes. It will support SEA’s ongoing innovation and new product development, enabling transparency and collaboration across engineering processes and the ability to gather and access engineering information quickly and in a controlled manner.

Said Stevens, “Implementing Aras is a major step for SEA in streamlining the way we manage our products throughout their lifecycle. This central configuration management application will be a single source of truth across all our disciplines and enable improvements to efficiency and effectiveness going forward. Razorleaf was selected for this contract following a significant research task and we are looking forward to working collaboratively to implement this tool over the next 18 months.”

Michael Welti, managing director of Razorleaf Corp. Ltd, said, “SEA is experiencing many of the common challenges we see with complex manufacturers, which include a need to accelerate innovation, implement consistent and collaborative business processes, and integrate across data silos to support the creation of a digital thread. Aras Innovator is one of the most flexible PLM platforms that will adapt to their business and future proof product development strategies as they evolve. We are excited to partner with SEA and be a part of their success in meeting digital transformation goals.”

“Our Razorleaf Ltd team is focused on bringing Aras Innovator to European manufacturers who want to evolve their innovation processes, shorten time-to-market, and build out a digital thread with integrated data strategies,” said Eric Doubell, CEO of Razorleaf Global. “Our partnership approach starts with mapping out an implementation road map that factors in SEA’s priorities while taking full advantage of Aras Innovator. We have been working with the platform since 2008 and are confident that Aras Innovator will support SEA’s digital transformation initiatives today and tomorrow.”

About SEA

SEA has more than 60 years’ experience in delivering and supporting advanced solutions that maximize defense mission capability. SEA also develops traffic enforcement and safety systems that enable more efficient transport management.

In the defense domain, SEA has applications in ship and fleet protection, agile-platform anti-submarine warfare and integrated underwater situational awareness. SEA manufactures and supports a wide range of capabilities designed to provide a rapid response to threats, track and monitor targets, and ensure system effectiveness and interoperation. SEA systems are in-service with the UK navy and multiple navies across the globe, providing agile solutions in nature’s most challenging environment.

Employing approximately 340 staff, SEA has UK offices in Beckington, Bristol and Barnstaple and a Canadian office in Quebec. SEA was acquired by Cohort plc in 2007.

For more information, visit www.sea.co.uk.

About Razorleaf Corp.

Founded in 2000, Razorleaf is a consulting & systems integrator with specialized expertise in PLM, MES, integration, migration, and test automation. They are focused on helping manufacturing organizations connect products and processes across the digital enterprise to drive more value from the innovation process. Led by a highly skilled and seasoned team of experts across the United States, Europe, and Asia, Razorleaf transforms businesses by offering comprehensive consulting and implementation services focused on managing the digital thread across the product life cycle and supply chain.

For more information, visit www.razorleaf.com.

^{Belinda Finch as Chief Information Officer}

IFS, the global cloud enterprise software company, today announced that it has made two senior appointments with Max Roberts and Belinda Finch joining the company’s executive leadership team as chief operating officer and chief information officer respectively. The appointments underpin the company’s consistent performance trajectory as well as its longer-term plans for growth.

Max Roberts joins IFS from Stripe, a financial infrastructure platform for businesses, where he was CEO of the UK business and latterly led the EMEA organization through significant growth. His career spans over 25 years in the technology sector and specifically the enterprise software space where he held a wide variety of leadership positions at Oracle, Salesforce, and Stripe. He has also been a non-executive director of UK Finance.

As he steps into his new COO role, Roberts will work with the executive and wider leadership teams to develop IFS’s longer-term strategic products and services portfolios and develop the company’s strategic alliances and partnerships. Priorities will be aligned to continuing to drive innovation that not only meets customers’ needs, but also anticipates and responds to market demand, and delivers sustained revenue and margin growth for IFS. Roberts will take responsibility for IFS’s Industry, Service Management, and Enterprise Asset Management business units, and support IFS global sales and customer success teams in customer engagements.

Belinda Finch joins IFS from mobile giant Three, where, as CIO, she led Three’s digital transformation program and worked closely with their product teams to drive system developments that would enhance customer experience. Finch’s previous experience includes senior leadership roles at Centrica and Vodafone as well as at Accenture and KPMG.

Belinda’s leadership values have been recognized with accolades such as Women in Tech Excellence Awards 2022, CIO of the Year Finalist, and MVNO’s World Congress Woman of the Year Awards 2023.

In her role as IFS CIO, Finch will oversee the continuation of the company’s digital transformation journey and work with the executive leadership team to maximize the adoption of AI across the entire organization, driving productivity and effectiveness as the company strives to deliver an outstanding customer experience.

IFS CEO Darren Roos commented: “I am delighted to welcome Max and Belinda to IFS. They are joining at a very exciting time, and I am confident that their energy and perspectives will have a very positive impact as we enter our next phase of growth.” Roos continued: “They both bring strong expertise and a proven track record that is well aligned to our space and, in Belinda’s case, to one of our core industries. He concluded: “I am proud that the brand awareness IFS has achieved over the last few years and our consistent performance are attracting such incredible talent. I know that their combined experience and vision will be hugely instrumental as we accelerate our growth journey.”

The company also shared that Michael Ouissi and Sal Laher will move to IGT1, the Holding Group for IFS, as COO and CDIO respectively, and take more central roles in ensuring long-term value creation from recent and future M&A activities.

About IFS

IFS develops and delivers cloud enterprise software for companies around the world who manufacture and distribute goods, build and maintain assets, and manage service-focused operations. Within their single platform, their industry specific products are innately connected to a single data model and use embedded digital innovation so that their customers can be their best when it really matters to their customers—at the Moment of Service. The industry expertise of their people and of their growing ecosystem, together with a commitment to deliver value at every single step, has made IFS a recognized leader and the most recommended supplier in their sector. Their team of over 6,000 employees every day live their values of agility, trustworthiness and collaboration in how we support our 6,500+ customers.

Learn more about how their enterprise software solutions can help your business today at ifs.com.

ANDOVER, MA, Dec 4, 2023 – Aras, a leader in product lifecycle management solutions, announced that Red Bull has selected Aras Innovator for their product lifecycle management (PLM) solution. Aras’ SaaS-based application platform will be integrated into Red Bull’s existing SAP S4/HANA and enterprise application infrastructure. In addition to managing the company’s complex recipe management, it will provide support for compliance concerns and ensure a seamless connection with the Austrian company’s global partner network. This is an important factor as Red Bull is active in 175 countries and sells more than 11.5 billion cans of its energy drink each year.

As a global company with a growing portfolio, it is critical for Red Bull to have a solution in place that ensures all parties have access to the most accurate and up to date product data that adheres to the regulatory compliance standards of the food and beverage industry.

Red Bull says: “Transparency and security throughout the entire supply chain is crucial for us as a global beverage manufacturer. Aras Innovator provides a unified environment that allows all users of product information to collaborate around a single set of processes and data.”

Aras Innovator will enable Red Bull to configure their PLM solution to meet their unique needs as well as adapt it to respond to new requirements or take advantage of new innovation. In the food and beverage industry, regulatory standards require very precise information about ingredients and supply chains. This becomes even more complex in the case of Red Bull where production and sales are global, not just in one country. The digital solution behind it must combine scalability and flexibility so the entire end-to-end process can be accurately managed and monitored.

In addition to the technical requirements, cultural fit was also a key factor for Red Bull. The company valued Aras’ global positioning and strong presence in the DACH region. It was important for them to have knowledgeable local contacts and have access to a strong network of different implementation partners.

Red Bull says: “We considered many factors in evaluating PLM solutions. In terms of culture, Red Bull and Aras simply fit together. This, in addition to their international reach and expertise, gave us the confidence that they would be the best technology partner for us.”

Roque Martin, CEO, Aras said: “Red Bull is much more than just an energy drink – it is a company that has a deep-rooted passion for its brand and a unique drive to inspire people and ideas. As a company with a vision to transform the way the world makes products, we wholeheartedly understand this and look forward to giving this partnership wings with innovative, enterprise-class solutions.”

About Red Bull

Inspired by functional drinks from East Asia, Dietrich Mateschitz founded Red Bull in the mid-1980s and launched the innovative energy drink in Austria on April 1, 1987. In 2022, 11.582 billion cans of Red Bull were sold worldwide, an increase of 18.1% compared to the previous year.  In the same period, group revenue grew by 23.9% to 9.684 billion Euros. At the end of 2022, Red Bull had 15,779 employees globally and actively sold products in 175 countries.

About Aras

Aras is a leading provider of product lifecycle management solutions. Its technology enables the rapid delivery of flexible solutions built on a powerful digital thread backbone and a low-code development platform. Aras’ platform and product lifecycle management applications connect users in all disciplines and functions to critical product data and processes across the lifecycle and throughout the extended supply chain.

For more information, visit www.aras.com.

CAMPBELL, CA, Dec 1, 2023 – Centric Software, the product lifecycle management (PLM) market leader, is pleased to announce that Polish fashion group LPP SA (LPP) has selected Centric Planning. Centric Software provides the most innovative enterprise solutions to plan, design, develop, source, price and sell products such as apparel, fashion, home, footwear, sporting goods, consumer electronics, cosmetics, food & beverage, and luxury to achieve strategic and operational digital transformation goals.

Based in Gdansk, Poland, LPP is an innovative, family-run business, one of the fastest-growing clothing companies in Central Europe which manages five recognisable fashion brands: Reserved, Cropp, House, Mohito and Sinsay. Catering to a number of different demographics, LPP designs, manufactures and distributes its collections across 39 countries over 3 continents through its ecommerce channels and vast distribution network of over 2,000 stores.

Operating for over 30 years, with noticeable growth since 2019, LPP continues to drive development forward with an intensive expansion throughout Europe. During that time LPP has noted over 60% dynamic growth and changed its business model towards omnichannel solutions in addition to significantly changing their development strategy, turning it towards the southern, central and western parts of the continent. Recognizing the need to further streamline their omnichannel planning in order to achieve their expansion strategy and drive future growth LPP, through their IT subsidiary Silky Coders, selected market-leading retail planning solution; Centric Planning.

“We were looking for a planning solution that could handle omnichannel effectively, with modern cloud-based technology and highly flexible configurability,” says Andrzej Kryżewski – data science director of Silky Coders. “We have decided to pursue a complete omnichannel strategy, investing in both bricks and mortar and e-commerce stores. Centric Planning is a perfect fit for our fast-growing omnichannel strategy. It is very intuitive to use and will help us to organize our data in a way that supports our dynamic growth.”

With Centric Planning in place, LPP expects to see substantial time savings.

“Centric Planning will enable us to have all of our data in one place, minimize errors and unify planning processes across our five brands,” says Kryżewski. “Our merchandisers will be able to spend time making strategic decisions rather than collecting data.”

“We are delighted to collaborate with LPP as they build a digital foundation for rapid omnichannel expansion,” says Chris Groves, CEO of Centric Software. “We look forward to working with the LPP team and Silky Coders as they implement Centric Planning to develop streamlined and efficient planning processes that will drive their growth strategy.”

About LPP Group

LPP is a Polish family business and one of the fastest growing clothing companies in the region of Central Europe. For 30 years, it has been successfully operating in Poland and abroad, offering its collections in such prestigious capitals as London, Helsinki or Bukarest. LPP manages five fashion brands: Reserved, Cropp, House, Mohito, and Sinsay, whose offer is available today in stationary and online stores in nearly 40 markets worldwide. The company has a chain of over 2000 stores with the total area of 1.8 million m2 and distributes clothing and accessories to 3 continents every year.

For more information, visit www.lpp.com.

About Centric Software

From its headquarters in Silicon Valley, Centric Software provides a concept to customer solution experience for consumer goods such as fashion, outdoor, luxury, multi-category retail, grocery, food & beverage, cosmetics & personal care and consumer electronics to plan, design, develop, source, buy, make, price, allocate, sell and replenish products.

Centric Software’s flagship solution Centric PLM brings cost savings and efficiency by optimizing product execution from ideation to development, sourcing and manufacture. Centric Planning is an innovative, cloud-native, augmented-intelligence solution delivering end-to-end planning capabilities to maximize retail and wholesale business performance. Centric Pricing & Inventory leverages AI to drive margin and revenue improvement by influencing demand via price and inventory optimization from pre-season to in-season to season completion. Centric Market Intelligence is an AI-driven, market insight platform for data-informed decision-making on competitor offers and pricing as well as consumer trends and buying behavior. Centric Visual Boards pivot actionable data in a visual-first orientation to ensure robust, consumer-right assortments and product offers.

Centric Software has the highest user adoption rate, customer satisfaction rate and fastest time to value in the industry. Centric Software has received multiple industry awards and recognition appears regularly in world-leading analyst reports and research.

Centric Software is a subsidiary of Dassault Systèmes, the world leader in 3D design software, 3D digital mock-up and PLM solutions.

For more information, visit www.centricsoftware.com.

CAMPBELL, CA, Nov 22, 2023 – Centric Software, the product lifecycle management (PLM) market leader, is pleased to announce that Design Studio, a Sri Lankan fashion apparel manufacturer predominantly catering to UK, European & US high fashion brands has chosen Centric PLM to drive efficiency and growth. Centric Software provides the most innovative enterprise solutions to plan, design, develop, source, price and sell products such as apparel, footwear, sporting goods, furniture, home décor, consumer electronics, cosmetics, food & beverage and luxury to achieve strategic and operational digital transformation goals.

Established in 2002, Design Studio originated as an apparel sourcing hub based in Colombo, Sri Lanka. Today, the company has grown to be one of the leading fashion manufacturers, catering to womenswear brands on the British, European and American high streets. The family-owned company now boasts in-house production capabilities across 7 facilities spanning 3 continents and a workforce of 3,700 individuals.

Navidu Samarakkodi, director for technology, strategy & transformation at Design Studio narrates how they came around adopting PLM. “We find it’s the perfect time when the economy is a bit slow, to divert our attention towards optimizing the way we work and getting the right tools in place to digitally transform the business. We started by redefining a business capability model for Design Studio, then looked at industry peers to see what tools they’re using. We soon realized PLM is definitely one of the tools we need, going beyond your traditional ERP.”

The company struggled with information scattered across different applications such as emails, spreadsheets and chat groups. There was also a lot of time wasted on manual processes that could be digitalized, such as sampling – or even generating reports directly at a style level, regardless of the various color, size, destination and fit combinations that make up the SKUs for that style. After a thorough RFP process, Design Studio identified Centric PLM as the ideal solution to provide a single source of truth. Having a universal platform for all product-related data provides visibility to their core business processes such as managing complex product assortments and styles, creating multi-variant Bill of Materials (BOMs), managing end-to-end sampling processes and staying on top of all costings.

Navidu cites the reasons why they chose Centric, “The team demonstrated a clear understanding of our requirements and worked closely with us to determine the modules required to achieve our commercialization goals. Their experience and know-how in complex system integration with our other business platforms were crucial. Centric’s successful track record in implementing PLM for the fashion manufacturing industry, combined with its Agile Deployment approach, were key considerations. Our users have access to the PLM system from day one, with continuous refinement throughout the project sprints. This means the implementation truly aligns with our needs, rather than having to wait many months before we can use the system.”

The company’s sales & marketing teams, merchandisers, sampling & garment technology teams, industrial engineers, technical teams and leadership teams are all set to use Centric PLM. However, its impact goes far beyond. “The product data generated within PLM like style specifications, gradings & measurements, fabric & trim requirements, critical path information, supplier quotes and upcharges also concern our back-end users. Ultimately, our Manufacturing, Warehousing, Logistics and Finance teams end up becoming secondary consumers of the PLM data through ERP integration – it really has a company-wide impact,” shares Navidu.

Chamila Samarakkodi, founder and managing director at Design Studio says, “We want to achieve greater end-to-end visibility, cut down wastages and optimize profitability—things that we expect by digitalizing our operations. We believe Centric can make that a reality, and the implementation team has been fantastic to work with so far. They demonstrate a deep understanding of the industry, which helps us see eye-to-eye and expedite project delivery.”

President of Centric Software, Fabrice Canonge says, “We are honored that Design Studio, a family-owned fashion manufacturer cementing their legacy in the industry, has chosen Centric PLM to amplify their digital transformation.  We’re eager to witness the collaboration’s remarkable value for their company and customers.”

About Design Studio

Design Studio are a leading family-owned fashion manufacturer headquartered in Sri Lanka, with in-house production capabilities spanning 7 facilities across 3 continents.

Their experience dates back over two decades to when we first began as an apparel sourcing hub based in Colombo, Sri Lanka, in 2002, with a little over three employees. Since then, our business has continued to evolve through innovation, learning, and increased exposure to multiple markets and product segments.

Today, they are proud to offer an end-to-end service along every part of the product lifecycle, as the supplier of choice for high-end ladieswear, with a strength of over 3,700 skilled members in their family. They continue to be the magic behind bestselling pieces for numerous much-loved global brands, producing dresses, jackets, blouses, trousers, and more.

Their approach is founded on continuous investment in our business and teams, the value they place on strategic assets and partnerships across the value chain, and our quintessentially Sri Lankan sense of resilience no matter the challenge—giving us a strong culture of adaptability and flexibility. This is all underpinned by robust financial management, up-to-date policies and procedures, and fit-for-purpose technology enablement.

They are passionate about delivering sustainably manufactured clothing following the highest ethical & compliance standards, with exceptional levels of client satisfaction.

For more information, visit https://designstudiolk.com/.

About Centric Software

From its headquarters in Silicon Valley, Centric Software provides a concept to customer solution experience for consumer goods such as fashion, outdoor, luxury, multi-category retail, grocery, food & beverage, cosmetics & personal care and consumer electronics to plan, design, develop, source, buy, make, price, allocate, sell and replenish products.

Centric Software’s flagship solution Centric PLM brings cost savings and efficiency by optimizing product execution from ideation to development, sourcing and manufacture. Centric Planning is an innovative, cloud-native, augmented-intelligence solution delivering end-to-end planning capabilities to maximize retail and wholesale business performance. Centric Pricing & Inventory leverages AI to drive margin and revenue improvement by influencing demand via price and inventory optimization from pre-season to in-season to season completion. Centric Market Intelligence is an AI-driven, market insight platform for data-informed decision-making on competitor offers and pricing as well as consumer trends and buying behavior. Centric Visual Boards pivot actionable data in a visual-first orientation to ensure robust, consumer-right assortments and product offers.

Centric Software has the highest user adoption rate, customer satisfaction rate and fastest time to value in the industry. Centric Software has received multiple industry awards and recognition appears regularly in world-leading analyst reports and research.

Centric Software is a subsidiary of Dassault Systèmes, the world leader in 3D design software, 3D digital mock-up and PLM solutions.

For more information, visit www.centricsoftware.com.

CAMPBELL, CA, Nov 21, 2023 – Centric Software, the product lifecycle management (PLM) market leader, is pleased to announce that Blue Star Group (BSG), a leading Latin American retailer, has selected Centric Planning to drive strategic growth. Centric Software provides the most innovative enterprise solutions to plan, design, develop, source, price and sell products such as apparel, fashion, home, footwear, sporting goods, consumer electronics, cosmetics, food & beverage and luxury to achieve strategic and operational digital transformation goals.

Founded in Argentina in 1995, BSG is one of the world’s leading specialty retailers of fashion, jewelry and accessories, reknowned for their playful brands, Todomoda and Todomoda Beauty, and their more sophisticated Isadora brand. A highly innovative multicategory retailer with 800+ stores and 15 ecommerce channels, BSG utilizes digital technology and concept stores across 8 different countries to develop customer relationships and enhance customer experience.

The company has ambitious growth goals, aiming to reach 60 countries by 2028, for which BSG identified personalization of customer experience as a key component for achieving success in these new territories. By tailoring their product offering to each individual market, BSG aims to consider cultural differences and further facilitate localization to maximize their impact across new markets. To achieve their growth strategy, BSG sought a retail planning solution that can optimize inventory across multiple product categories, as well as enabling granular customer insights and provide valuable what-iffing capabilities to tailor assortments to the needs of each market.

After a short search, they selected Centric Planning to deliver merchandise financial planning (MFP), and assortment strategy and optimization to move their merchandise planning processes away from spreadsheets and bring in a more integrated and centralized digital approach.

“Centric Software deeply understands the challenges of retail; the speed, the mindset and the need to be agile and in-tune with the consumer,” says Rafael Sánchez, chief innovation officer at BSG. “Before we discovered Centric Planning, we had not found a retail-specific tool that we had confidence in to handle data with the right level of granularity to streamline planning and get results.”

“Expanding into new markets demands a deep understanding of culture and consumer needs in order to target assortments,” Sánchez continues. “By leveraging augmented intelligence, Centric Planning will enable us to better interpret patterns in complex data and pull potential scenarios together faster to make better decisions about localized, consumer-centric assortments. We want our teams to be able to leverage data to create the future.”

As Sánchez concludes, “We have found not just a tool, but a team of people that we trust and like to work with. We can build a long-term alliance with Centric Software that is mutually beneficial.”

“We are delighted that BSG has selected Centric Planning as the digital foundation for strategic growth,” says Chris Groves, CEO of Centric Software. “BSG is an innovative company that leads the way in the application of digital technology to retail challenges, and we are looking forward to partnering with the BSG team to achieve their goals.”

About Blue Star Group

BSG is one of the world’s leading specialty retailers of fashionable jewelry and accessories for young women, teens, tweens and kids. Today, their two great brands have an international presence with over 800 stores around the world.

BSG works hard to provide our customers with renewed collections of fashion accessories inspired by the latest global trends. Their priority is to focus on the design and quality of the products at affordable prices.

For more information, visit https://bsg.global/.

About Centric Software

From its headquarters in Silicon Valley, Centric Software provides a concept to customer solution experience for consumer goods such as fashion, outdoor, luxury, multi-category retail, grocery, food & beverage, cosmetics & personal care and consumer electronics to plan, design, develop, source, buy, make, price, allocate, sell and replenish products.

Centric Software’s flagship solution Centric PLM brings cost savings and efficiency by optimizing product execution from ideation to development, sourcing and manufacture. Centric Planning is an innovative, cloud-native, augmented-intelligence solution delivering end-to-end planning capabilities to maximize retail and wholesale business performance. Centric Pricing & Inventory leverages AI to drive margin and revenue improvement by influencing demand via price and inventory optimization from pre-season to in-season to season completion. Centric Market Intelligence is an AI-driven, market insight platform for data-informed decision-making on competitor offers and pricing as well as consumer trends and buying behavior. Centric Visual Boards pivot actionable data in a visual-first orientation to ensure robust, consumer-right assortments and product offers.

Centric Software has the highest user adoption rate, customer satisfaction rate and fastest time to value in the industry. Centric Software has received multiple industry awards and recognition appears regularly in world-leading analyst reports and research.

Centric Software is a subsidiary of Dassault Systèmes, the world leader in 3D design software, 3D digital mock-up and PLM solutions.

For more information, visit www.centricsoftware.com.