5 Ways Jewelry Companies Will Rock This Holiday Season with EDI
The holiday season is fast approaching – and jewelry companies are gearing up for the busiest time of the year. But with more demand comes more pressure.
How do you make sure your business doesn’t just survive but thrive during this peak period? And how can you make sure that you exceed your goals this year without burning out your teams?
There’s a trade secret that the best jewelry companies are using to slide through the holiday season stress-free: Optimized EDI.
Optimized Electronic Data Interchange (EDI) is more than just a fancy tech term – it’s a key solution for jewelry companies looking to simplify their systems and move to a digital-first operation. With a highly optimized EDI solution, you can integrate a variety of your most important systems to streamline nearly all parts of your order processing:
- Accounting systems
- Small package carrier systems
- In-house and 3PL Warehouse operations
- Overseas manufacturing and support operations
- Online marketplaces
If you are new to EDI or a seasoned EDI veteran, here are 5 ways EDI will help your jewelry business rock this holiday season.
1. EDI Can Boost Your Jewelry Fulfillment Efficiency
It’s after Black Friday and your team is swimming in orders. Manual data entry is eating up hours and you’re behind on fulfillment. Your staff is stressed and you’re watching profits slip away with each delayed order.
Here’s how an optimized EDI environment can help:
- Save time and reduce touchpoints at every stage of the fulfillment process
- Make orders visible as pending in your in-house system
- Automate the transfer of orders to the fulfillment process so it can run without manual logistics getting in the way
Consider this: a simple stock item order from a major retailer flows through your system. With EDI integration, the moment the order is placed it is automatically entered into your accounting system, inventory is updated and the fulfillment process begins – all without a single manual keystroke.
2. Accuracy: Fewer Errors, More Satisfaction
Does this sound familiar? Last holiday season, you received a flood of customer complaints about wrong orders… followed by a tidal wave of chargebacks from retailers. Your reputation was damaged, and those mistakes ate into your profits.
With the right EDI solution, you can get proactive to make sure you avoid these unwanted holiday “gifts”:
- Reduce manual errors that can lead to costly vendor chargebacks
- Implement rules-based fulfillment operations that eliminate decision-making
- Simplify training for seasonal hires so everyone performs consistently across your team
Instead of manual data entry for complex specs, EDI ensures every detail – from diamond selection to band sizing – is captured and transmitted throughout your fulfillment process. This is the kind of accuracy that will delight your customers and keep you in good standing with your retail partners.
3. Automations Let Technology Do the Work
Your skilled craftsmen and experienced sales team are spending hours a day on manual data entry and order processing. You’re paying premium wages for work that doesn’t utilize their expertise and it’s holding your business back during the peak holiday period.
With an EDI solution, you will:
- Process transactions with minimal human intervention
- Process large volumes of orders in bulk
- Increase overall efficiencies and accuracy in your fulfillment process
With EDI integration and automation, a batch of 500 orders from a major online marketplace can be processed, sorted and queued for fulfillment in minutes. Your team can then focus on simple steps that prioritizes making the products and providing customer service instead of getting bogged down in order entry.
4. EDI Empowers You to Do More with Less
Every holiday season you face the same conundrum: hire a large temp workforce and struggle with training and quality control or overwork your permanent staff and risk burnout. Either way labor costs skyrocket while efficiency plummets.
EDI complements your current operations to help put an end to these risks – particularly during the holidays:
- Process more orders with fewer people
- Have goods handled by people with specialized and overlapping skills
- Oversee many seasonal employees with fewer experienced permanent staff
5. System Linkage Gives You Key Data on Demand
Jewelry manufacturers often face a chain reaction dilemma:
- Your sales team is getting calls from customers asking about order status.
- Your production manager is trying to forecast material requirements.
- Your CEO is asking for real-time sales data.
- You’re getting overwhelmed with requests for information that should be at your fingertips.
EDI helps you manage and fill orders better than ever before (and keep everyone in the know):
- Get the right information to the right people within your business
- Provide data to key decision makers throughout the management, manufacturing and fulfillment chain
- Easily and automatically offer fulfillment information to customers
With an EDI integrated system, a customer can ask about their custom wedding band order and the sales rep can answer instantly with clear visibility into the fulfillment process. Meanwhile the logistics manager knows when inventory is low and the CEO has a real-time dashboard of holiday sales across all channels.
Give Your Company The Best Gift This Holiday Season
The holiday season is a challenge and an opportunity for jewelry businesses. By using EDI integration, you can turn the challenges into stepping stones for success. From efficiency and accuracy to manpower and information flow, EDI integration is the secret to making your jewelry business shine this holiday.
Use EDI integration and dazzle your customers, outperform your competition and crush your holiday sales targets. It’s time to unwrap the gift of streamlined operations and make this holiday season your best ever.
Ready to get EDI into your jewelry business and shine this holiday? Contact our team at EDI Options to find out how we can help you implement these solutions and make your holiday operations as smooth as your best pieces.
