ABSTRACT

Business Intelligence is the one of the main pillars of this industry.

Business intelligence is a technology and an application which can be
used when it comes to automate the industry. Now a days industries need
to process large amount of data. This data needs to be processed to give
the proper information for making the business decisions. But often these
data have so many challenges such as, many industries generate huge
chunk of data in any format and in many unstructured files. So in this
study we try to gather info on what processes does these companies in
textile and apparel companies uses to extract info and make effective and
precise decisions and also we are going to focus on the advantages the
companies who integrated business system intelligence. Through this
study we concluded that the major improvement are perceived in the
textile and Apparel companies are more prone to adopt latest technologies
with advanced business intelligence system.
Keywords: Business Intelligence Systems, Sustainability, Forecasting,
Structured and unstructured data, Automation , ERP
 INTRODUCTION
As we know that this is the era of industry 4.0 and most the big textile and apparel firm are adopting
for the latest technologies to gain competitive advantage over their competitors. This study will be
focused solely on how big data, Artificial intelligence and business intelligence system can help
“Textile and Apparel Industry” to solve sustainability issues [1]
From the footwear to fashion, the nature of the textile and apparel industry has changed and
become much more efficient as compared to past times. According to new trends, global markets
and increasing demand of customer expectation as they become much more aware these days,
every company is forcing themselves to make most of resources they have. Manufacturing and the
supply chain must be cost effective and provide decision and management with ability to maximize
productivity across the broad.
If we look closely into the “Textile and Apparel Industry” due to smart manufacturing
environment is facing many challenges such as efficiency, sustainability and a quick response to
customer fluctuating requirements. The race in Industry 4.0 pushed these industries to integrate
digital technologies, such as Internet of Things (IOT), radio-frequency identification (RFID),
robots, augmented reality, additive manufacturing, and cloud technology. As the industries is
shifting towards automation and digitization as a result companies everyday are generating high
volume of structured and unstructured data from which it is nearly impossible to extract the
required or useful information without cleaning and converting the data into useful information.
One innovation that has helped the industries in making precise decision using data integration
technique and analysis is “BUSINESS INTELLIGENCE SYSTEMS”. Business Intelligence
Systems provides solution to textile manufacturers and apparel retailers to get business information
on the globalization, trends, and fashion patents regional choice on, textile and apparel industries.
Business intelligence systems basically is an envelope of tools, technique and strategies integrated
by companies to extract various and large data to support statistical and operational decision. So
we can say that the capability to utilize and mobilize both unstructured and structured data with
big data and BIS techniques together can enable companies to survive and sustain in competitive
markets. [2]

Structured and unstructured data approach in Business intelligence.

I have read in a book by Alan Harrison that,
“Today it’s not the companies, it’s the competition between their supply chains.”
But from the above study what I think is that
“Today it’s not only the competition between the companies, it’s the competition between how
they use their data in order to become more efficient by making better decisions and as a result
gain competitive advantage”

MAIN ISSUE THESE DAYS

These days the main problem in this industry is that,
 Most of the companies don’t know when to adopt business intelligence systems and also
what are the issues that lead to the adoption of business intelligence systems?
 How can improve business value creation processes to maintain sustainability by
integrating business intelligence system?
 What barriers are faced in adopting business intelligence system?
Now from now onwards I am going to discuss these above questions and there answers.
BUSINESS INTELLIENCE AND TEXTILE AND APPAREL INDUSTRY
Business intelligence provides solution to textile manufacturing and apparel industry to get the
information for all over the globe and to check the trends and fashion choices by the people all
over the world. Those who have the control over the retail market has a better opportunity to attract
and reach to the customer. Those are successful in this field can maintain control by providing
retailers the right products. After that they see the sale if the sales are disappointing they simple
offer alternative products to the retailers. By identifying trends on the selling floor and reacting
immediately, manufacturers can take advantage of situations before their competition has an
opportunity to react, providing a welcomed service to retailers. By using BI tools, apparel
manufacturers can easily take over the competition. The underline secret of theses successful
manufacturer is the way they capture and analyze the information from retailer sites and then using
that data to drive additional sales. As the industry 4.0 immerged and apparel industry have
experienced an overload of selling their information to analyze the trends in near real time
environment. This marks an incredible shift of information from retailer to manufacturer.
Traditional apparel enterprise resource planning (ERP) system were created to react only on
customer request but not capable of using the wealth of data as business intelligence systems does.
More over ERP system only used to collect the data, manage and provide the report at a very basic
level and are not able to provide any analytical, predictive and forecast related info. But what I see
those companies who were provided ERP solution are now shifting towards modern tools and
technology to become competitive they are integrated Machine Learning, AI , BI, Business Objects
etc. I have used SAP System they were purely an ERP service provider but now they are also using
new tech like SAP ARIBA, SAP HYBRIS and SAP HANA etc.
Business intelligence help the organization to
 Gain more visibility and detailed look up to their business
 Attract, acquire and satisfy profitable customer
 Reduce cost
 Optimize the supply chains
 Increase productivity hence increase sale and as a result increase profit
 Perform detailed analysis and predict future trends
By using business information system textile industry manufacturer gets the insight of
competitor’s strategies, discover and access new trends in the industries and have forecast new
opportunities in future. By using business intelligence systems in Textile and Apparel industry
manufacturer can have different kind of reports that can help them to get complete insight real
time. Some of the reports are as follow
 Customer walk in analysis
 Festival sales comparison
 Brand age analysis
 Shopwise football growth (ADIDAS)
 Session sell throughout.
These days’ systems are built to collect sales information. Textile and apparel manufacturer can
use affordable tools and technologies to collect day to day sales through data and compare the
result with the previous one and from this they can easily come to know if there is a stock out
happening, check inventory and order shipment for that product. Now just imagine now instead of
doing this manually and check each and every sales and department and following this lengthy and
exhaustive practice that has maximum chances of faces error you can simply do it one or two click
and see everything in real-time. In addition, the manager can "drill down" on a web browser menu
to identify additional trends in color, size or fabrication that could assist in developing future sales
with the retailer at their next sales meeting. [8]
Using BI we can create dashboard for individuals to check key performance indicator (KPI). These
dashboards can generate reports on an ongoing basis to track their sales, shipments and inventory
status. [4]
Above figures is taken from Tableau software and here it shows how we get data on dashboards.
An apparel manufacturer can have cost saving advantages by integrating business intelligence
systems that can reduce time typically needed to gather and analyze the information and make
decisions. Reacting to problems quickly and effectively. Today's BI solutions like 1KEY are
affordable for small- to mid-sized apparel manufacturers, who can now effectively compete with
larger companies to win retail space.

ADOPTION OF BUSINESS INTELLIGENCE IN TEXTILE INDUSTRY

Here, I am going to discuss what are the different technologies we can adopt in textile and apparel
industry.
Radio-Frequency Identification:
RFID technology these days are used in textile and apparel industry for manufacturing,
warehousing, distribution, inventory control, automatic item tracking and also in supply chain
management. But it produces a large amount of data every day and that data is used for analyzing
purposes. Thus the industries using RFID need to adopt BIS to grasp the true value of data.
Cloud Technology:
These days cloud computing is one of the most uprising and innovative technology and has the
strong potential to enhance the strategic, management efficiency. As we know that textile and
apparel industries are adopting new technologies so here cloud computing can save a lot of their
cost that is being used to adopt costly maintenance and updating software.
Mobile Tech:
Mobile technology has also become more and more popular these days in textile and apparel
industry as customer are more prone to shopping online via through Amazon, Daraz or eBay etc.
these firms also use customers data to check the product credibility as well as customer’s
satisfaction here BI plays a very vital role and also help firms like Amazon, eBay to improve their
customer satisfaction level.
FORECASTING AND BUSINESS INTELLIGENCE SYSTEM
Business intelligence also use the data for forecasting purposes. In the textile and apparel industry
the ability to accurately forecast costs is an important consideration, gaining the appropriate
intelligence to enhance decision-making relative to such costs can be equally challenging . In the
article [6], I have read that only in the apparel industry the sponsorship cost is around $135 billion.
Which if highly competitive and include brand like NIKE (US), ADIDAS (GERMANY) and
Under Armour. The annual revenue of these three is $50 billion. From this what I am trying to
prove is that, if these brand use business intelligence for more accurate forecasting these brand can
easily out run their competitors in a long run. One such example is that Adidas announced the
partnership with Manchester United and their Adidas will invest around $96 million in 10 year
agreement that is more than their rivals NIKE ($40 million per season) but in the return Adidas
had predicted that they we generate profit of estimated $1.5 billion in sales from replica shirt on
annual basis. And this turns out to be true but how they knew beforehand that they are going to get
that much profit? It’s just they the data effectively using BIS and forecasted everything.

IMPORTANCE OF INTEGRATING BUSINESS INTELLIGENCE SYSTEM

The drastic increase of the worldwide BIS market reveals its great importance that has attained
remarkable attention from industry practitioners. In 2017, the BIS market had increased by 7.3%
from the previous year with revenues up to $18.3, and by the end of 2020, it is expected to reach
$22.8 billion. By realizing the great benefits of the BIS, many enterprises, including in the textile
and apparel industry, have invested considerable resources to leverage the true value of BIS but
still the success rate of BI projects is very low. It is confirmed by the literature that almost 70–80%
of BIS projects result in failure and are unable to provide the expected outcomes. [5]
COMPARING ADIDAS “MY SELECTED COMPANY” TO ITS RIVALRY NIKE
An IT manager at Adidas that is currently one of the most renowned apparel sportswear brand that
manufacture clothing, shoes and accessories told that Adidas has adopted business intelligence
system to harness the large amount of data by using Micro-strategy analytics . Company has
adopted the tools of business intelligence system that is running on SAP HANA that allow staff to
help customer needs. Different warehouses information has centralized into one single platform
based onto SAP HANA in memory database. The company used the data to improve the
understanding of the customer behavior. The company analyzes the financial reports to predict
market.
And also if we talk about NIKE that is basically leading brand in market today with the revenue
of 34.35 billion USD has used business intelligence and the data in so effective way that no other
brand has ever out cross them these days. How? Nike used the data of companies and they knew
that the first thing they need to do is to get customer recognition so the signed a contract with the
basketball superstar Michael Jordan and quickly released the Air Jordan line. Adidas signed Run
DMC banking on the explosion of Hip-Hop. Who won? Well, they both sell sports shoes and
Adidas signed a musical group while Nike signed a sports star. Till 2000, Nike’s worth was$15
billion and Adidas’s $8 billion. Nike dominated most sports while Adidas remained strong only in
soccer.
Here Nike used their previous sales and customer data quite well and played a very intelligent
move to remain in the eyes of public. But on the other hand, as we know both of the brands are
using business intelligence systems (BIS), so what Adidas did is they analyze market data and they
knew that they can’t beat NIKE single handedly so they buy REEBOK who had the sales worth of
$3.5 billion and ADIDAS and that time had the sale worth of $6.6 Billion combined they touched
$10.1 billion market sale and NIKE had the sale of $10.8 billion. So that’s how ADIDAS competed
with NIKE. The Business Intelligence has definitely helped Adidas to evolve as one No. 1 in
sports footwear.
MY SUGGESTIONS:
As I have read the articles on BI, Forecasting, structured and unstructured data handling etc. I think
ADIDAS with the integration of business intelligence systems also try to come in the online or
ecommerce industry, as we know online order industries are flourishing these day. What the thing
I see missing on both Nike and Adidas website is that, that they don’t provide live chat feature.
This feature alone can increase the customer satisfaction up to 30% and also the data that is being
captured from that can help for future as well.

Right here they can give option to live chat to their

customer and also make ui a bit more interactive
 REFERENCES
1. (Ahmad, Miskon, Alabdan, & Tlili, Towards Sustainable Textile and Apparel Industry:
Exploring the Role of Business Intelligence Systems in the Era of Industry 4.0, 2020)
2. (Baars, Henning, Kemper, & Hans-George, 2008)
3. (Giri, Jain, Zeng, & Bruniaux, 2019)
4. (Arefin, Hoque, Bao, & Yukun, 2015)
5. (Ahmad, Miskon, Alabdan, & Tlili, Exploration of Influential Determinants for the Adoption of
Business Intelligence System in the Textile and Apparel Industry, 2020)
6. (Jonathan A. Jensen, Lane Wakefield, Joe B. Cobbs, & Turner, 2016)
7. (By Md. Al-Hasan, Mst. Rubina Aktar, & Seraj, 2018)
8. (Mrs. Kanchan A. Khedikar, Miss. Vaishnavi V. Yevale, Miss. Payal M. Mehta, & Badnore, 2019)
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