A Wardrobe Management System That Seamlessly Integrates with Your ERP

A Practical Guide for Suppliers of Uniforms, PPE & Workwear

Smart Red is a renowned, sophisticated, and intuitive uniform management platform in its own right. However, what a lot of people don’t fully appreciate is just how well it integrates with others. By pushing and pulling data to and from the systems that you already trust and rely upon, you will discover that it can vastly improve the efficiency of your processes.

This article outlines how you can use your ERP with Smart Red to manage your product data. However, Smart Red can talk to just about any system including:

- CRM (Customer Relationship Management) system to access and use customer data.
- Active Directory to allow staff members to use their existing logins.
- Finance systems to share invoice and order information.
- Other custom-made software that you may have, including garment customisation systems.

The first rule of sales: make it easy for the customer to buy. As a uniform supplier, Smart Red allows you to do just that for your customers. It enables, not only their management team but their whole workforce to place orders that come directly to you. Not only that, but it provides full control over allowances right down to job role and department level. Orders within allowance are auto-approved and sent straight to you for fulfilment. Those out with allowance go for management approval first. It sounds simple, doesn’t it? That’s because it is… and it gets better!

Manage Product Data in One Place

If you do not have an ERP system with product information already stored, don’t worry, Smart Red allows you to easily set them up within the administration area. However, as a supplier, the chances are that you already have some comprehensive product information in an ERP system. Rather than have you manage that data on both platforms, using an API, you can populate Smart Red with your existing data.

Alternatively, you may find it easier to manage your products on Smart Red and have real-time updates fed into your ERP. The integration ensures that it works both ways.

Organising Your Data

Storing product information for internal use and proving valuable, enhanced descriptions that encourage people to place an order are two completely different things. So, before the connection with your ERP is set up, you should review and update the setup and the detail around your products. This is to ensure that they categorise and ‘sell’ your products as effectively as possible. And that they provide any vital information associated with them.

Product Attributes

Product attributes are the specifics that describe and define your products. They provide the customer with a choice and can also influence their decision to place an order. The most relevant examples of product attributes for clothing are:

-          -  Colour

-  Size 

Attributes should be arranged and shown within the ‘parent product’ to avoid multiple entries/pages for the same product. Generally, these will be displayed to the customer within a dropdown list. To give a simple example, the following should be combined within a single parent product called ‘Plain Cotton Shirt’.

-  Plain Cotton Shirt – Blue
-  Plain Cotton Shirt – White
-  Plain Cotton Shirt – Black

Example Product Data

To continue with the example of our cotton shirt:

Title: Plain Cotton Shirt

- Input without abbreviation and in title case, rather than capitalized to make them more legible. No reference to attributes.

Category and Subcategories: Clothing > Shirts

- Where will the product be found within the category menus?

Short description: High-quality cotton shirt that can be both casual and formal.

- A brief summary of the product that makes the customer look for more detail.

Full Description: These shirts provide the workforce with maximum comfort and style. Manufactured using 100% high quality, pre-shrunk mid-weight cotton - a soft, breathable material which naturally retains heat and provides comfort against the skin. The premium manufacturing process means that they are highly durable and long-lasting. You can wash these shirts time and time again with confidence, knowing that they will retain their colour and shape.

- When ordering online, people cannot touch, feel, or try on a product. So, you need to provide more detail on the quality and technical aspects of the item for those who are unfamiliar with it. You may also wish to include manufacturer sizing charts and washing instructions in this section to provide further reassurance. These descriptions are particularly important in relation to garments where compliance needs to be displayed such as fire-resistant standards or waterproof ratings.

Product Codes (SKUs):

- SKUs are assigned to products to track stock internally. You probably have these in place in your ERP system and Smart Red is designed in the same way. This means that we can easily display different colours/sizes/options using your existing info.

These are combined using parent and child SKU codes. For example, our cotton shirt may look like this:

The parent code identifies that this is a single ‘product’, and the list of SKUs combines sizes (Small, Medium, Large) and colours (White, Blue, Black) that can be ordered by the customer. Once the integration is set up, Smart Red can also check your stock in real-time and display availability accordingly down to attribute level.

Brand/Supplier:

You may also wish to list your products by manufacturer or brand. This data can also be displayed and used for searching and filtering on the Smart Red Uniform Portal.

Product Images:

You should source and supply professionally taken, high-resolution images for each of your products. These can be linked to an existing library and identified by you either at parent level only or specific to the selected attribute. For instance, when people select a blue shirt, the product gallery image on the page will show the blue shirt. Images should be included in a product import as a file name and supplied for upload, e.g. ‘SHIRT1-S-14.jpeg’ are supplied, or from an external library, e.g. https://www.myproductlibrary/clothing/shirts/shirt1/SHIRT1-S-14.jpeg

Have Smart Red Your Way

The only limit to what Smart Red can do is your imagination. The possibilities really are endless and if you are looking for something more specific to your processes or systems, we’d love to hear from you. Smart Red is fully supported and continues to be developed and improved by ourselves here at Big Red Digital. Based in the UK, we have been developing award-winning software for businesses globally for over 30 years. 

Quick Links:

-  Request a demo of the Smart Red Uniform Management Platform

-  More about the Supplier Version of Smart Red

-  Find out more about the connectivity of Smart Red

-  Download the Smart Red Supplier brochure (PDF format)

-  Smart Red Supplier case study & testimonial