Kellwood: Unified Systems Reduce Operational Costs

Challenges

Kellwood Apparel is a leading apparel manufacturer in the United States that has been providing great fashion for more than 50 years. Kellwood’s diverse portfolio includes apparel brands for women, juniors, and girls like Jolt, Rewind, My Michelle, Democracy, Briggs, and reCreation.

Kellwood’s complex web of interconnected systems had become extremely difficult for their internal IT team to manage and support. The cost of hiring and retaining in-house support specialists for every integration and subsystem was neither justifiable nor feasible. Kellwood needed to migrate data from all their legacy systems to make effective use of their new Microsoft Dynamics AX implementation.

Solution

Visionet has had a long-standing relationship with Kellwood for over 14 years. We implemented and managed their legacy solution, which made us the logical choice when Kellwood required a partner for data migration and support for their new Microsoft Dynamics AX implementation.

As part of Visionet’s Managed Services for Microsoft Dynamics, we allocated a team of dedicated resources that could be scaled quickly to address Kellwood’s changing needs. During data migration, we increased the team size to expedite the process and ensure business continuity for Kellwood. Our development experts simultaneously worked on key Microsoft Dynamics AX integrations, including Microsoft BizTalk and electronic data interchange (EDI) with trading partners.

As Kellwood’s requirements transitioned to a support state, we scaled the team back so it consisted of Dynamics AX support and integration experts. This leaner team ensured that Kellwood’s Dynamics AX implementation, integrated with over 30 other systems, continued to operate smoothly. Visionet provided a cost-effective and stable solution that addressed Kellwood’s IT needs and enabled them to outsource their operational IT risk.