Microsoft Copilot – The only AI companion for fashion and apparel

There’s a lot of buzz around AI these days, and it can be hard to filter the noise to find the right tool for you. For fashion and apparel brands, though, there’s only really one choice – Microsoft Copilot.

Sure, other great tools like ChatGPT and Claude exist, but these companions don’t integrate seamlessly within the Microsoft ecosystem.

Conversely, Copilot is available in both Dynamics 365 (D365) and Microsoft 365 (M365), making it easy to become a part of your daily operations.

(If you didn’t know: The D365 platforms are consistently recognised as the best ERPs available, so you really should be using them anyway.)

So, without further ado, let’s dive into specific use cases for Copilot in fashion and apparel.

Optimising inventory management

Inventory management is a crucial part of any brand’s operations, but it can be tricky to navigate without the right tools in place. Inefficient inventory management can lead to overstocking, resulting in wasted resources or overstocking, which damages sales.

Brands can utilise Copilot and the Sales and Inventory Forecast extension within D365 Business Central to optimise inventory levels, generate accurate forecasts, and create vendor replenishment requests.

Within D365 Supply Chain Management, brands can query omnichannel stock levels using Copilot through the Inventory Visibility service.

Daily users, like web shoppers, sales clerks, and account managers, can quickly identify products and stock levels using this feature to facilitate smoother shopping experiences while maintaining an eye on inventory levels.

The service accepts natural-language input, so there’s no need to memorise exact product IDs, and it eliminates the need to search through menus, tabs, and fields.

Personalising shopping experiences

Personalisation is nothing short of a must-have for brands and retailers. It is a vital piece of the puzzle that helps retain customers and foster repeat purchases.

In a world of abundant choice, personalising engagements is key to standing out amongst the crowd.

In January, Microsoft Cloud for Retail’s Copilot template for personalised shopping was made available in public preview, offering real-time offers and recommendations to shoppers to create a positive experience.

Since this particular use case is based on the cloud, businesses can receive the latest updates without any extra need or hassle, ensuring they always use the latest version.

It also feeds data from customer interactions into the Retail data model for analytics and insights, helping brands and retailers further shape their decision-making.

Enhancing supply chain management and transparency

We’d be remiss if we didn’t mention the role Copilot can play in one of the fashion industry’s hottest topics – transparency.

Copilot can be used within D365 Supply Chain Management to quickly handle mass changes to purchase orders while assessing the impact of the amendments and risk.

Its robust capabilities can even optimise sourcing decisions by tracing products, discovering resolutions, and summarising responses to suppliers with the right tone across all communication channels.

These features enable brands to swiftly collaborate with impacted suppliers, identify new ETAs, and re-route purchase orders based on identified disruptions.

When utilised within D365 Finance and Operations, Copilot can also analyse market trends and data to predict raw material price volatility. Such visibility enables brands to budget accordingly and develop appropriate purchasing strategies.

Automating mundane tasks to empower creativity

Fashion is inherently a creative industry, but creativity needs room to breathe.

Designers who are continuously bogged down by repetitive, mundane tasks can lose much-needed energy that hampers their ability to innovate.

Copilot can be used in conjunction with M365 to streamline mundane tasks within the stack, empowering designers to redirect their energy towards creative work.

Additionally, Adobe and Microsoft recently announced an upcoming integration between Adobe Express and Copilot, which will allow brands to quickly generate images, videos, animations, social media posts, banners, and flyers for marketing purposes.

Copilot – the fashion industry’s must-have companion

With all the above in mind, it’s clear that Copilot is the must-have AI tool for fashion and apparel brands.

It offers countless opportunities to enhance creativity, streamline operations, and elevate customer experiences.

The seamless interoperability with the Microsoft tech stack provides yet more scope for brands to refine their processes and minimise their own tech stack complexity. And that’s not all…

With K3’s solutions natively embedded in the D365 architectures, brands not only benefit from a leading ERP, but also specialised functionality designed with fashion in mind.

If you’d like to learn more about how you can drive your operations forward, feel free to drop us a line today.