Atlanta—Nov. 7, 2014—TXT Retail, a provider of integrated and collaborative end-to-end planning solutions for the fashion, luxury and consumer sectors, launched TXT AgileFit, a new deployment approach that further improves the speed and quality of project implementations.
The TXT AgileFit deployment methodology provides a disciplined approach to implementation, a template-based starting point, and a full set of documentation to ensure an efficient and successful project with an exact fit for each and every customer. Reference documentation and supporting tools include solution design and application guides, pre-configured formulas, interface specifications and performance tests, all based on industry best practices and leveraging TXT’s 20 years of experience in the retail sector.
The TXT AgileFit approach is inspired by the Agile Software Development concepts—a set of incremental software development methods for early delivery—but conscious of the retail calendar and the need to reach a defined level of process performance before being able to start evolution cycles.
"With AgileFit, retailers slash the time to achieve benefits," explains Simone Pozzi, Managing Director at TXT Retail. "The solutions become rapidly operational, which is extremely important in the dynamic retail sector, where calendars are tight. Companies can then evolve the software based on everyday requirements, such as automating specific tasks, or adding a particular formula. These specific needs, raised after the system is in use, prove extremely valuable given that they come from "real-life" scenarios, as opposed to trying to visualize and configure every detail upfront and long before the roll-out."
Based on tested processes and practices, the AgileFit deployment methodology also brings other benefits in terms of quality of the solution design, reduction in project efforts and man-days, mitigation of the inherent project risks in execution.
"Usual challenges over the design and delivery of projects include collecting requirements from key resources who typically have availability constraints, as well as the time normally required for generating the supporting data and for configuration. TXT AgileFit addresses these challenges: reference documentation expedites analysis work; initial data specifications are available before a project starts; and less configuration means more time for testing, training, and change management which are key elements to a project success," adds Pozzi.
Retailers, he concludes, reduce time to accrue benefits through ever faster, reliable deployments. The approach is one that fosters true partner enablement and strong synergies with customers, incremental improvement and ever stronger adaptability to change, which is essential in today’s retail scenario.
