Gerber Technology Receives 2011 Frost & Sullivan Global Fashion Product Lifecycle Management Product Leadership Award for its YuniquePLM Solution

Gerber Technology received the 2011 Frost & Sullivan Global Fashion Product Lifecycle Management Product Leadership Award for its innovative YuniquePLM™ solution. Frost & Sullivan analysts evaluated several contenders based on product features and functionality, product innovation, product acceptance in the marketplace and customer value enhancements. In addition to a comprehensive market analysis, research included both quantitative and qualitative discussions with end users.

The award, like other Frost & Sullivan Best Practices awards, recognizes the impact of the innovation on the industry. In their analysis, Frost & Sullivan’s Research Director Muthukumar Viswanathan and Senior Analyst Karthik Sundaram, made the following statements concerning YuniquePLM:

Criterion 1: Product Features/Functionality

"YuniquePLM has a high-end user interface with extensive merchandise and line planning and financial planning tools. In addition, management dashboards, provided by the YuniqueBI (business intelligence) add-on, enables users to combine data from YuniquePLM with information from enterprise resource planning (ERP) and other enterprise software."

Criterion 2: Innovative Element of the Product

"One aspect enables YuniquePLM to function in a way that surpasses the traditional scope of PLM – its ability to use data and images by importing information from Gerber Technology's AccuMark® system. The ability to integrate models, markers and finished points of measures (POMs) from the AccuMark CAD system is a notable feature of YuniquePLM that considerably enhances the design process, reduces errors and avoids repetitive work. This interactive facility between the two systems improves overall design process and reduces time-to-market, considerably."

Criterion 3: Product Acceptance in the Marketplace

"YuniquePLM is a well-drawn solution created by a team of people from the industry who have hands-on expertise in addressing the needs of the fashion PLM industry across the globe. This has enabled the wide adoption and acceptance of YuniquePLM across various end-users in the fashion industry."

Criterion 4: Provides Customer Value Enhancements

"The Gerber brand has a unique product suite with leading fashion solutions in computer-aided-design (CAD), product data management (PDM), product lifecycle management (PLM) and computer-aided manufacturing (CAM) solutions. The user-friendly interface, coupled with a high level of productivity achieved through YuniquePLM, has been widely acknowledged by some of the leading participants in the fashion industry. YuniquePLM has been able to surpass end-user requirements in terms of enhancing design process, reducing wastage of material and reducing time-to-market."

"We are pleased that the independent team at Frost & Sullivan recognized YuniquePLM with this prestigious award," said Donny Askin, president of Gerber Technology’s Software Solutions business. "We are particularly delighted that interviews with existing YuniquePLM users revealed their overwhelming acceptance of the system and emphasized its overall value to brand owners, retailers and manufacturers in terms of ensuring product quality and accelerating time to market. We serve customers of all sizes – from multi-billion-dollar retailers with suppliers around the globe, to privately-owned companies with only a handful of employees, but we want to delight each of them with our CAD and PLM software solutions."

Frost & Sullivan's Best Practices Awards recognize companies in a variety of regional and global markets for demonstrating outstanding achievement and superior performance in areas such as leadership, technological innovation, customer service and strategic product development. Industry analysts compare market participants and measure performance through in-depth interviews, analysis and extensive secondary research in order to identify best practices.