June 12th, 2024

Centric Software Unveils New Innovations and China-focused Customer Success Team at Shanghai Summit

A gathering of Centric customers, partners and industry experts gain insights into the fast-moving Chinese consumer goods industry through technology and industry best-practices

CAMPBELL, Calif., June 13, 2024 – Centric Software® has concluded a successful two-day ‘cycle of excellence’ summit in Shanghai, titled ‘Renewing Together, Going Forward Together.

Nearly 400 Centric customers, partners and industry experts were immersed in Centric Software’s take on China’s consumer goods industry. Over 20 speakers from leading fashion, sports, food, cosmetics and other consumer goods companies and industry experts shared extraordinary insights into consumer goods trends and corporate practices.

Joe Groves, Senior VP of Global Sales, gave the keynote speech. According to Groves, the retail industry is undergoing changes with drastic reductions in time-to-market and that Centric provides end-to-end solutions to address this. “Centric gives customers a seamless experience through an AI-driven integrated platform for PLM, planning, pricing, inventory optimization and competitive market intelligence.” He stressed the importance of the Chinese market, “China is one of the largest and fastest-changing retail markets in the world, and it is also one of Centric’s largest customer groups.”

Groves thanked the 120+ customers in China for their support and shared Centric’s future market expansion, community development and development vision to empower Chinese retailers, brand and manufacturers to succeed both in the Chinese market and abroad.

Highlights from the summit include several key takeaways:

1. Centric’s philosophy of ‘best customers, best solutions and best team’ is the springboard to enabling Chinese companies to navigate constantly changing market conditions.

Speakers from companies like WIN Garment, AIMER, Starpro and JINJIA discussed hot business topics like brand globalization, creating e-commerce bestsellers, new product iteration, new product R&D and consumer insights. The real-life case studies enlightened and inspired the attendees.

In China, Centric has 82% of the consumer product PLM market share, a 99% customers satisfaction rate and 95% customer repurchase rate. There has been 20% YOY growth of Centric Software in China since 2014. These shining figures are not only market recognition for Centric, but the result of Centric’s presence in China for ten years.

The Centric China team covers 15 major industry segments and 6 business model systems. From fashion, footwear, accessories, multi-category retail, consumer electronics to food and beverages, cosmetics & personal care, from traditional brands, to OEM/ODM to cross-border e-commerce, Centric continues to gain insights into more market segments and to provide exclusive best-practice scenarios for Chinese customers of all sizes.

2. Centric unveiled its new innovations in its product portfolio and introduced its China Customer Success Team. With 5 major product lines all integrated into the same out-of-the-box platform starting with Centric’s flagship’s PLM, additions to the lineup include: Centric Planning™, Centric Pricing & Inventory™, Centric Market Intelligence™ and Centric Visual Boards™. Centric Software covers the full product lifecycle from concept to replenishment for reduced time to market and optimized margins.

Product experts from Centric took the stage to present how to build better products faster and more sustainably, talking about the concept of ‘industry best practices + market lead out-of-the-box technology (meaning highly and quickly configurable) + expert team = sustainable success.’

AI technology is changing the business operating paradigm and injecting new momentum into business development. Centric’s 5+ year approach to AI has been to apply it to solve specific business challenges with proven ROI, as opposed to a one-size-fits-all approach.

A new round of scientific and technological revolution and industrial transformation combined with the wave of globalization have created huge opportunities for companies. These opportunities can be amplified with AI’s unique ability to process vast amounts of data and variables in multiple dimensions. Through a multi-angle analysis of specific business scenarios for Chinese consumer goods companies, the sessions provided profound insights into building and strengthening global operational capabilities with AI.

3. Also highlighted is that even as maintaining profitability is becoming more difficult, the pressure on producing environmentally friendly products is also increasing.

To address this, Centric has incorporated tools to both track environmental compliance as well as own company targets that go beyond basic compliance. Reaching sustainability (or other compliance goals) can be incorporated early into the planning stage to ensure that these objectives are met throughout the ideation, development, sourcing/manufacturing and selling phases.

The summit not only demonstrates Centric’s willingness and strength to strive for excellence with China’s consumer goods industry, but also gave Chinese consumer goods companies the chance to network and share with each other, digital innovation best-practices.

“China plays an important part in Centric’s goal of empowering consumer goods companies to digitally transform product concept to replenishment,” says CEO of Centric Software Chris Groves. “Centric solutions are all market-driven and our partners in China have advanced the breadth and depth of our software, yielding better ROI, improving user interface and contributing to AI-powered innovations.”

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