The Digital Leader

4The Right First Step

Li & Fung, based in Hong Kong, is a more than 100‐year‐old company that has built its business and strong reputation as a master at managing complex supply chains, operating between the world's major manufacturing hubs in East Asia and some of the world's leading Western brands. It works with these brands, such as Kohl's, its largest customer, Skechers, Hang Ten, and Sean John, in processing and filling production orders, supporting the design, materials sourcing, manufacturing, logistics, and delivery of consumer products, largely garments, in an end‐to‐end process.

But e‐commerce, changing consumer habits, and drastically reduced manufacturing cycles are challenging its business. Despite its decades of experience and global network, it found itself struggling to keep up with the changes, which were squeezing cash flow and revenues. The company finally came to Altimetrik, an expert digital enabler, with problems that it was not able to resolve with its legacy systems. Its overly complex, incompatible order management systems simply weren't keeping up, and cash flow was suffering.

A key challenge the company faced was coordinating both ends of its value chain—on one side, there were an array of different brands, each with different manufacturing cycles, design and ordering systems, and accounts payment processes, and at the other end of its operations were the vendors and the factories that produced the products, with their own separate data systems and ...