natific is celebrating 10 years of ASAP! This software has revolutionized the color development process for some of the world’s most well-known brands and hundreds of their suppliers.
Those who use ASAP to measure and evaluate color digitally are able to reduce their development time from several weeks to just a few days. They also benefit from increased accuracy from digital measurements, instant communication with partners, and supply chain transparency.
Lands’ End was the first brand to adopt ASAP a decade ago and they still use it to this day, along with natific supplier certifications. Carol Revels, the Senior Manager of Color and Fabric Operations at Lands’ End, was a key partner in adopting and rolling out ASAP.
Reflecting on the initial need for a color development solution, Carol said,
“We had to find a more efficient solution than emailing lab dip requests, emailing comments, chasing information missing from lab dip paperwork, manually keying updates into our PLM system weeks after the fact, answering emails from cross-functional partners asking for a status update, and the keying and rekeying of data between disconnected systems.
natific ASAP was the clear solution to centralizing our work into one system that integrated with our PLM, immediately eliminating the duplicative data entry and chasing information. The premise behind ASAP was right, and I knew in my gut it would work.”
One of the biggest game changers for Carol’s team was PLM integration with ASAP. Since ASAP gets information directly from their PLM system, they no longer needed to chase missing information. Additionally, cross-functional partners no longer needed to email Carol for status updates since they could see up-to-date information for themselves in PLM.
“When PLM started flowing cancelled requests to ASAP, the suppliers and our Color teams stopped working on dropped colors no longer needed!”
As a result, they saved time and resources, and were able to closely examine and standardize their internal PLM practices. They also gained the ability to track and share valuable KPI with leadership, which contributed to better decision-making.
What about their suppliers? Carol admits there was skepticism at first, but she said,
“I had a supplier in my office about 2 years into our ASAP journey, and he told me, you know, Carol, I was sure this ASAP thing was just going to create more work for us, but it has been so easy for us to use and manage our color requests with you.”
After 10 years, natific continues to update and improve ASAP, making it more powerful than ever. Several brands now rely on it for their daily color management, and in the next article, we’ll hear from another longtime ASAP super user – Under Armour.