FDM4 Continuously Evolves Its OpenEdge Based Business Solutions Platform, Expanding Into New Markets
Challenge
With fast-changing consumer tastes and preferences, supply chain fluctuations and rising materials and distribution costs, the apparel industry is full of challenges.
Solution
Continuously evolve and modernize its Progress OpenEdge- based business solutions platform to meet changing market needs.
Result
Realized continuous growth with a steadfast commitment to developing modern, state-of-the-art solutions on the OpenEdge platform.
Full Story
Challenge
With fast-changing consumer tastes and preferences, supply chain fluctuations and rising materials and distribution costs, the apparel industry is full of challenges.
Meeting those challenges requires market-leading business solutions that help companies keep ahead of a rapidly evolving market landscape across the apparel lifecycle, from manufacturers and distributors to the decorators who custom brand apparel.
FDM4 has been using Progress® OpenEdge® for more than 30 years, delivering state-of-the-art business solutions to help their customers grow the bottom line with its steadfast commitment to ongoing modernization.
Progress has grown with us along the way as we’ve transformed with new, modern technologies to serve customers in today’s data-driven world.
Mike Cutsey
President, FDM4
Solution
That commitment has paid off as today FDM4 provides its growing roster of customers with a wide variety of leading business solutions that span ERP, warehouse management, e-commerce, CRM and more.
"From first taking the order, to clearing credit, sending the order to the warehouse, to scanning the merchandise for pick-pack-ship, printing the shipping label, charging the credit card when applicable, we are there every step of the way,” Cutsey said. Through the years, FDM4 has focused on modernizing both the frontend and backend of its solutions.
"Our ERP, WMS and CRM solutions are all browser-based,” Cutsey said. “In fact, customers of our warehouse solution now scan merchandise with touch screen mobile devices, and we’ve even integrated the WMS system with robotics solutions, further speeding the movement of goods from the warehouse. And because our software is browser-based our clients have the flexibility to host our software in the cloud at one of our infrastructure hosting facilities or they can still install the software on-premises at their location.
"And when all is said and done, we didn’t design a different app, we simply built upon the Progressbased foundation we’ve always had,” he continued.
Result
Today, after 30 years of building their solutions on Progress, FDM4 customers enjoy cloud-based, state-of-the-art business applications that continue to evolve with the ever-changing business landscape. That continuous improvement recently helped FDM4 sign on one of the industry’s largest decorators who brands apparel with logos and other custom designs for corporate branded apparel, promotional products companies, teamwear and sport apparel.
"With the FDM4 decoration print management module, decorators can view and share inventory levels across the industry to decide where they are going to buy product and at what cost without having to go to e-commerce sites or use EDI to manually contact a vendor,” Cutsey explained. “Since we are running OpenEdge across the apparel and hardgoods promotional products space, we have standard APIs to view and transmit data across the industry, which will bring a new level of efficiency to the process.”
FDM4 never stops moving forward. In fact, the company is now redesigning its UI with its continued use of Progress® Kendo UI® native components for React and Vue.
“Using Kendo UI, we can easily pop in built-in controls such as grids and propagate the change across thousands of screens,” Cutsey said. “It provides a common look and feel for a better user experience.”
As FDM4 has gone from its beginnings providing ERP solutions, to its pioneering e-commerce solution, to today providing solutions for manufacturers, distributors, decorators and promotional product companies, the one constant has been its partnership with Progress and its commitment to continuously modernizing its OpenEdge applications.
"The people at Progress are awesome, they always respond and are always receptive to our wishes, wants and desires,” Cutsey said. “OpenEdge has never held us back, we’ve always been able to do what we want with the technology. Most importantly, it’s reliable and just works.”
We look at technology as a race with no finish line, and to us, modernization isn’t a one-time project; it’s an ongoing commitment.
Mike Cutsey
President, FDM4